Thelonius

So at dinner break today -- we're now on a noon-to-10pm, six-days-a-week rehearsal schedule -- five or six of us were standing around the piano.

"Do you know Summertime?" asks the gospel singer.
"I have it in my book at home," said the piano player.
"How about My Funny Valentine?"
"That's in my book, too."
"What DO you know, without your book?"
"I know Thelonius Monk."
(silence)
"It goes like this."

Well, Monk was one of the most out-there, dissonant, intellectual jazz pianists that ever lived. Every flat-note, wrong-note, clash-key, two-keys-next-to-each-other- jangling you can think of, he wrote into his music.

Some people consider it the utter essence of jazz. Like me, when I was in college, and hell-bent on becoming the jazz musician's jazz musician. (I always want to be the something's something; right now, I want to be the director's director.) So anyway, he starts playing this Monk tune, and I know it. I start scatting along with him. "Ba-DEE-ba-doo-BAHHHH, dah-bee-DOO-BOP!"

After the theme, he heads off into wild improvisation. We join in -- drums, sticks, bells, taiko -- in a freeform jam. The singer rolls her eyes, laughs, and starts singing, improvising gorgeously over top of it all. When we finish, there's a short silence.

"You don't know Summertime, and you know THAT. You can PLAY, huh."

Our piano player, who works in a holistic garden store and heads up his own jazz piano trio when he isn't acting, grins and nods.