Tommy Flanagan discusses his return to recording after a break

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Tommy Flanagan discusses the influence of Thelonious Monk

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Tommy Flanagan discusses his early influences in Detroit

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Q: “[Thelonious] Monk’s technique was not the usual technique, was it? He had a way of wringing sounds out of a piano. He could somehow play a chord and stress a different note or something that made it sound a little, well ‘off’ isn’t the word because you’d hear everything – it’s just that the stress was different. Do you have to play a little like Monk in order to play his music?”

A: “Not really, but you know, I can kind of really get into it, you know. You know, I've watched him play a lot, so I know there is a certain kind of tension he used in his dynamics that you can get a few, you know, like body inflections, you know. Like you can use your shoulder and all that. Like he used a lot of that. And you know, like you say where he could like lay down a chord and just make one note ring out, you know. By just holding it down, you know, and releasing the others. And it gives a nice effect, you know. Plus a lot of things that he did where they seemed unorthodox, but he practiced a lot.”