Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Himself

This CD has Thelonious Monk playing solo piano for the entire album, hence, Thelonious Himself. This CD lets me dive into how Thelonious plays, by letting me tune into just listening to solely him, without a backing band. Since he is able to play by himself, he is allowed to do alot of things he wouldn't be able to do in a band, like switch up the tempo and melody whenever he feels it's needed. Alot of the CD is very relaxed, yet sophisticated with most of the time having Thelonious playing the bass line with his left hand and playing the melody with his right. This is something that I am trying to work on, being able to hold a tune without anyone else, which is proving harder than it seems, and Thelonious does it effortlessly on this CD, creating a self-portrait masterpeice.

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