A minimalist jazz pianist who took bebop to even higher heights, Thelonious Sphere Monk was a unique character and a maverick in the music industry. How else can we describe a man who kept his grand piano in his kitchen? Not interested in using his music to please people, Monk strove to discover ways

Beats, Bebop, Enigmatic, Improvised, Loose, Playful, Quirky, Slangy

While it may seem like a contradiction to speak of chaos and precision in the same sentence, the work of Jackson Pollock demands it. At the same time that his paintings depict disorder, frenetic abandon, and a turbulence of nearly cosmic proportions, they demonstrate perfect balance. The manner in wh

Abstract expressionism, Expansive, Formless, Loose, Playful, Post-war literature, Repetition, Rhythmic

Just before his death in 1991, Miles Davis teamed up with rapper Easy Mo Bee to make a jazz/hip-hop album called "Doo Bop." This wasn't the first time Davis had done something utterly new -- his entire career was devoted to jazz-faring exploration. Playing with such supernovae as Charles Mingus

Bebop, Classical, Composed, Cool, Cool jazz, Electronic, Elegant, Expansive, Fusion, Fuzzy, Hard bop/post-bop, Improvised, Intimate, Loose, Lush, Mathematical, Minimal, Open-ended, Quiet, Sexy, Sincere, Spare, Subtle, Trippy

Though he became identified as the voice of the Beat generation, Jack Kerouac was always haunted by the knowledge that the voice he was famous for was not really his own, but something that he couldn't and wouldn't live up to. Ultimately, the schism between who Kerouac was and who the world wanted hi

Beats, Bloomsbury, Event, Excessive, Improvised, Loose, Open-ended, Sprawling