’Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk: The Ballad That Became Jazz’s Dark Crown Jewel
There are pieces of music that transcend their form, compositions that seem less like creations of man and more like things discovered, unearthed from some hidden well of emotion and sound. Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight” belongs to that rare category. Written in the early 1940s and first recorded in 1947, it has become perhaps the…