Q 01/05

During concerts, Thelonious Monk often left the piano while his band kept playing to do what?

A) Stand up and dance

B) Shake hands with fans

C) Retune the bass

D) Conduct the horns

Answer · why

A) Stand up and dance

Stand up and dance was Monk's habit: he would stop playing, rise and move to the music for a few moments, then return to the keyboard.

Q 02/05

Thelonious Monk's Time magazine cover story was delayed for three months by which 1960s news event?

A) The Cuban Missile Crisis

B) Kennedy's assassination

C) The Apollo 11 landing

D) The March on Washington

Answer · why

B) Kennedy's assassination

Kennedy's assassination bumped the story from November 1963, so Monk's portrait finally ran on February 28, 1964, with an article titled The Loneliest...

Q 03/05

Which Hollywood star was executive producer of the 1988 film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser?

A) Robert Redford

B) Woody Allen

C) Warren Beatty

D) Clint Eastwood

Answer · why

D) Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood, a jazz devotee, put his company Malpaso behind the documentary and supplied the budget its makers needed to finish it.

Q 04/05

Which 2023 film, an Oscar winner for its screenplay, follows a novelist named Thelonious and nicknamed Monk?

A) The Holdovers

B) Poor Things

C) American Fiction

D) The Zone of Interest

Answer · why

C) American Fiction

American Fiction stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious Ellison, known to everyone as Monk; the film adapts Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure.

Q 05/05

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was renamed in 2019 after which pianist, its longtime chairman?

A) Herbie Hancock

B) Chick Corea

C) Keith Jarrett

D) Oscar Peterson

Answer · why

A) Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock had long chaired the institute, which the Monk family helped found in 1986 to bring jazz education to young people around the world.