Jason Moran & Orchestra featuring T.S. Monk May 19, 2007

"Monk Town Hall Revisited"
Jason Moran & Orchestra featuring T.S. Monk
Saturday, May 19 • 8pm

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
$64 $44 $36 $25

“The latest in a long line of brilliant jazz pianists with idiosyncratic ideas about performance.” - Wall Street JournalProgram Notes
Some 40+ years on, the 1959 album The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall, like the concept behind it, sounds remarkably prescient. Hal Overton's arrangements highlighted the playfulness, intelligence, and power of Monk's music. Tonight, using those same Overton arrangements (the original charts were discovered in the possession of one of the original tentet players, saxophonist Paul Jeffrey) the Town Hall Concert will receive another look at the hands of another modern innovator, pianist Jason Moran, and Monk's son T.S. Monk.

Moran has played the piano since the age of six, but it was Monk's music that perked up his ears to the instrument's potential. After graduating from Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with pianists Jaki Byard, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Andrew Hill. He toured with Greg Osby, but was soon leading his own group, the acclaimed Bandwagon trio with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. He was Playboy Magazine's first “Jazz Artist of the Year” and has received honors in numerous DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star categories, including Jazz Artist, Pianist, and Composer. Drawing on his performance tonight, Moran will be working on a co-commission from Duke University and SFJAZZ for the fall’s 25th Anniversary San Francisco Jazz Festival to further explore Monk’s large-band music. “It’s much larger than a tribute project,” he told the Boston Globe. “Monk is the reason I started playing piano. I owe him all the investigation I can do.”

T.S. Monk has accomplished the tricky feat of honoring his father's legacy while carving out his own distinctive career. He began performing in his father's trio in the ’70s, ventured into R&B in the ’80s, and has led an acclaimed sextet that melds his jazz and R&B influences since 1992. A 1997 tribute to his father, Monk on Monk, won “#1 Album” in the DownBeat Reader’s Poll. T.S. Monk also established the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz to support music education for students across the United States.

Inside Jazz Pre-Concert Talk
“Monk Town Hall Revisited ”
7PM

Personnel:

Jason Moran, Piano T.S. Monk, Drums Walter Smith, Tenor Saxophone Jaleel Shaw, Alto Saxophones TBA, Baritone Sax Ambrose Akinmusire, Trumpet Vincent Chancey, French horn Isaac Smith, Trombone Bob Stewart, Tuba Tarus Mateen, Bass

Official Website: http://sfjazz.org