Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Thelonius Monk’s Muse

“The Jazz Baroness” is a made-for-television documentary that traces the background and mutual influence of the inventor of Bebop, Thelonius Monk, and his great supporter, muse and mentor — Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, also known as Nica Rothschild. Abandoning her husband, children and famous banking family in the late 1940s, she came to New York to become an aristocrat of a different kind: jazz nobility. The film makes its American debut November 25 on HBO2 and its director, Hannah Rothschild — Nica’s great-niece — recently sat down with the Forward’s art and culture editor to discuss cool cats, Rothschild secrets and what she’d learned from researching the woman Clint Eastwood said fully embraced the “rebellion” of Jazz and Bebop.
–Dan Friedman

Watch the first few minutes of “The Jazz Baroness”:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.