Allen Michie<p>Jazztodon artist of the week: Thelonious Monk!</p><p>"My original influences, as a musician, were piano players that I don’t even remember. Because if anybody sat down and played the piano, I would just stand there and watch ‘em all the time.I was about 19 or 20, I guess, when I started to hear my music in my mind. So I had to compose music in order to express the type of ideas that I had.</p><p>I wasn’t trying to create something that would be hard to play. I just composed music that fit with how I was thinking. I knew musicians would dig it, because it sounded good. I didn’t want to play the way I’d heard music played all my life. I got tired of hearing that. I wanted to hear something else, something better. In fact, I wanted to play differently. I had a different conception of rhythm section, and all that.”</p><p><a href="https://jazztodon.com/tags/jazz" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>jazz</span></a> <a href="https://jazztodon.com/tags/monk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>monk</span></a> <a href="https://jazztodon.com/tags/theloniousmonk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>theloniousmonk</span></a></p>