Event Calendar

2013 marks the 10th year international Jazz pianist Madhav Chari has been in residence in Chennai, India. His very first India concert was in April 2003 at Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Chennai.

This concert is a celebration of the continued relationship between Goethe Institut Chennai and Madhav Chari.

The program starts with a very brief medley of songs by Austrian-German composer Kurt Weill, and continues with the music of Thelonious Monk, one of the geniuses of Jazz music. 

Thelonius Monk is the third great Jazz composer, in the line that starts with Jelly Roll Morton, and followed by Duke Ellington. He was one of the seminal founding members of the bebop movement within Jazz in the late 1930s/ early 1940s.

However rather than become a classic bebop musician like Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, Monk forged his own independent direction that did not forget many of the crucial elements of Jazz musicianship of the swing era together with his own unique insights into the music. In a sense he was really the one musician in Jazz who remains the most traditional yet the most contemporary, and his music continues to challenge the best Jazz musicians today.

Some of the great Jazz musicians who were crucially influenced by or worked with Monk include pianist Bud Powell, saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin and John Coltrane, drummers Art Blakey, Roy Haynes and Ben Riley, bassists Wilbur Ware and Ahmed Abdul Malik.

Admission is Free