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532 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 vincial Institute of Technology and Art in the 1930s before studying at the Provincial Normal School, where he received teaching certificates in education with a specialty in art. After employment in primary and secondary teaching and as a draughtsman, Perrott returned to his alma mater in 1946. He was a gifted educator who through his empathy and sensitivity towards students was able to achieve major success in inspiring them. Foran believes that Perrott consistently gave much of his energies to teaching and that his own artistic production suffered as a result, despite the fact that he had the opportunity to avail himself of additional formal training as an artist (especially by taking a leave of absence in the United States to study with Hans Hofmann and Will Barnet). Although primarily a watercolourist, Perrott experimented with oils, etchings, and engravings and produced actively in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but his own work was sacrificed for his teaching during a very demanding period at the College of Art. In 1960B61, Perrott became acting head and in the next year took on additional administrative duties. Finally in 1967, he was chosen head of the College of Art, a post he held until 1974, when he resigned to return to his artistic pursuits. In retirement, Perrott produced art, promoted art publicly, supported artists= organizations, exhibited, gardened, travelled, socialized, and received accolades. Throughout his life he provided support and encouragement for artists in western Canada. Foran=s book celebrates the career of an extroverted man who did much to train a generation of students. The >chalk= in The Chalk and the Easel thus refers not to that found in an artist=s studio but to that located under a blackboard at the front of a classroom. (SARAH M. MCKINNON) Rob van der Bliek, editor. The Thelonious Monk Reader Oxford University Press. xviii, 286. $48.95 Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-82), the jazz composer and pianist, was the romantic archetype of the creative genius. In his formative years, he was ignored and ridiculed for his >zombie music,= but he never wavered, crafting music full of unorthodox harmonies and eccentric rhythms, until his peers and finally the audience caught up to him. He then travelled the world as a star performer and heard his works played and recorded in grand settings. He lived to see his genius accorded full value as the jazz composer second only to his idol, Duke Ellington. But in his final decade he was overwhelmed by a deep melancholy and seldom left his darkened bedroom. Rob van der Bliek, music librarian at York University, provides a running commentary on Monk=s career and the music that impelled it in this anthology in the American Musicians series. Monk was as unique in his life as in his music, originator of the bebop uniform of shades, goatee, and humanities 533 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 beret, among other things, and he inspired a lot of writers to excel themselves. How fortunate that is. Interviews were the favoured form of jazz writing in Monk=s time, but Monk had little faith in words, and seldom used them. The few interviews that he sat still for were mostly notable for their vacuity (and five of them are included here, counting a >blindfold test,= which Monk fails miserably). There is a natural tendency for interviewers to try to edit Monk into articulateness, but the best interview by far, by Ira Gitler, is a straight report of their one-sided conversation that reveals B dramatizes, really B Monk=s maddening but apparently genuine diffidence whenever he was asked a question. Incisive commentaries and sharply drawn profiles more than make up for Monk=s own failings with words. Van der Bliek includes the celebrated essays (André Hodeir, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, three by Orrin Keepnews) but he has also dug up some obscure ones that shine light on Monk and should now join the list of essential reading (especially by Mary Lou Williams, Robert Kotlowitz, and Gary Elder). There is a judicious selection of contemporary reviews...

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