Wolfgang Schmidtke Orchestra

Thelonious Sphere Monk, born in North Carolina in 1917, was among the most unconventional artists that jazz produced. In the 1940s, the American pianist and composer shifted jazz music into a new paradigm, and bebop and modern jazz were born. Monk inhabited a world of his own, and not only as a musician: at his concerts, he sometimes danced around the piano or even crawled beneath it! He said that for him, silence was the shrillest of tones. To mark Monk’s 100th birthday, the Wolfgang Schmidtke Orchestra takes us back to the time and the moods of this legendary musician in a programme entitled »Monk’s Mood«.