MONK, THELONIOUS SPHERE. Jazz pianist ( in Rocky Mount, North Carolina). His family moved to New York when he was a child. Self-taught, he began playing piano at the age of six; later he studied privately. As a youth he played piano in a sanctified-church band that toured widely. He first attracted wide attention in the early 1940s as a member of an informal group that played after regular working hours in Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's...