Biboye Onanuga Plays Monk

Returning to the VIFF stage, Biboye Onanuga, presents: ’The Music of Monk’. The Edmonton-based drummer is joined by an iconoclastic ensemble of Vancouver musicians Quincy Mayes (piano), Jodi Proznick (bass), and John Nicholson (tenor) for an evening of Monk tunes and arrangements before the 1988 documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser.

“The key to swing jazz is to swing it.” Monk’s words are often top of mind when I play this music — “Jazz”. One of the beautiful things about this musical tradition is the ability for an individual’s essence to unravel through their playing. Their touch, feel, interpretations, etc . . . they reveal a person. And while technical skill and ability may be heard, “a genius is the one most like himself” (Monk) — their sound is felt. I am inspired by the players who seek to earnestly express themselves through the medium of music. Monk may have been the greatest of these. So we celebrate him and his contributions the best way we know how – through the music that was uniquely his own. — Biboye Onanuga

Biboye Onanuga is a British-born, Nigerian-Canadian drummer, and imaginative composer. Steeped in the arts scene since high-school, he quickly became a sought-after player – recently completing his music degree at MacEwan University and already joining nationally-recognized players such as Jim Head, Rubim DeToledo, Mboya Nicholson to name a few. Biboye has made meaningful contributions to his local scene through his instrumental hip-hop/jazz band (Good information), 3-year-tenure weekly music series (New Standards) and recent Sunday Jazz series (Daze Days).

About Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
Charlotte Zwerin’s 1988 documentary draws on 14 hours of prime Monk footage shot by Christian Blackwood in 1967 and 1968 (“like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls of Jazz,” enthused producer Bruce Ricker. Featuring Monk on tour in Europe, playing in clubs, recording, and in interviews, the film is supplemented with more recent interviews with band mates and the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, among others.

I had heard the music before. What the film gave me was an opportunity to see Thelonious Monk creating some of it, and, just as importantly, an opportunity to see how those who knew him loved him.

Roger Ebert

Some of the most valuable jazz sequences ever shot… The Monk music that courses through the film is extraordinary in its range of feeling.

Stephen Holden, New York Times

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