'Round Midnight - Thelonious Monk (1947)

First part…

Baroness PANNONICA ROTSCHILD, Thelonious Monk, and Jazz.

I believe that anyone who loves Jazz owes a lot to this Noble Lady.

After all, it was clear from the beginning that she wasn't comfortable in that world of obligations and rules. Drawn to speed and engines, at the age of 18 she was already driving fast cars and by 21 she had a pilot's license. She married Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, they lived in Paris, and they had 5 children. They survived the war... then she discovered Jazz.

1948: her friend Teddy Wilson introduces her to an unknown artist... Nica listens, unaware that this record will change her life and the lives of many artists... that it will change the fate of Jazz. That day she misses her flight to return to her family in London but does not take the next one because... she immediately sets out to find that Thelonious Monk, without having the slightest idea of where to locate him.

She will become the patroness of jazz, helping many jazz musicians in their careers. For her, each of them will write at least one song.

It will take her SIX years to track down Monk, and from that moment on, she dedicates herself entirely to him and his wife Nellie. Everything, from paying his bills, medical expenses, buying him a house, to finding him gigs.

The suite at the Stanhope Hotel in N.Y., where she lives, becomes the gathering place for the greatest jazz minds of the time (the list is long). She hosts them, feeds them, buys back the instruments they have sold at the pawn shop for a few pennies...

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