2018 interview. Just arrived in Cork, T. S. Monk, the son of the great Thelonious Sphere Monk, was changing hotels and just settling in to his new one as he arrived ahead of his appearance at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.

Had he played Cork before? The drummer, bandleader and keeper of the flame, custodian of some of the greatest compositions in jazz and the enduring ever inspirational legacy of his father said. “Yes I did, 20 years ago. I had an amazing time. They gave me the keys to the city and an award,’’ a smile in his voice on the phone.

One member of his band who played with him that time remains in his current sextet to play the Everyman tomorrow afternoon. And he is the tenor saxophonist Willie Williams, who has appeared on several of T. S.’ albums including Changing of the Guard (1993); Cross Talk (1999) and Higher Ground (2003).

Willie may be in a way his dad’s Charlie Rouse, who appeared on many of the classic albums. Just lately to new ears Charlie again emerged on Mønk at the heart of the great Monk quartet of the 1960s recently heard on a Copenhagen 1963 concert recording made available for the first time on vinyl or any format for that matter saved from oblivion and put out in loving sonic detail by the folk at Gearbox Records. And talk of course turned to the drummer who was Frankie Dunlop. Monk smiles: “I was very young but Frankie was a comedian, a lot of fun. He understood melody,’’ he says and mentions how sad it was that Frankie got so sick in the last 25 years of his life. ‘‘A great loss.’’

Towards the latter part of his own father’s career T. S. toured with him so knew at first hand both the musical and the familial aspects of his personality. Before that as a youngster he got to know and learn from Max Roach who with his father was in on the birth of bebop itself at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. “Max was the Messiah.’’

The Monk competition which initially started as a piano competition was his and his sister’s idea after his father’s death and then “rotated’’ to other instruments.

Names from jazz history just circle around like a benevolent aura as the conversation develops. T. S. talks admiringly about Wayne Shorter as ‘‘the greatest composer’’ in jazz and as part of the Cork setlist expect of course mucho Monk but a Wayne classic nestled too within the set.

The full line-up of the sextet confirmed by T. S’ wife and manager Gale is: the former Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra trumpeter Randall Haywood; the aforementioned Willie Williams; the Muhal Richard Abrams, Archie Shepp and David Murray legend Patience Higgins from Greenville, South Carolina on alto sax; Chris Berger, originally from Dayton, Ohio on double bass; and the elegant Danny Grissett who holds down the hardest seat of all, at the piano. No pressure!

T. S. played congas early in his career with the Cannonball Adderley drummer Louis Hayes among others and he was into disco funk as well. As for the congas he jokes how hard on the hands playing congas can be! He will by the way be using a standard jazz kit this weekend in Cork.

A very easy person to talk with affable and charismatic he mentions judging at a competition that featured singer Gregory Porter before he was famous. “I wasn’t much of a judge of singers,’’ he says. “I gave them all the same marks. I think Gregory was second. But I knew then he was going to be a star.’’

Turning back to the 1980s T. S. talks about a bit when I mention the great Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight which won Herbie Hancock an Oscar and adopted his father’s immortal and probably most loved composition ‘Round Midnight’ in its titling, he says that a lot of jazz players like himself at the time given a lull the music was going through went off to play R&B because the clubs like Birdland and the Village Gate were shutting down and the critics even didn’t really like some of the new talent coming along!

For T. S. himself in terms of profile maybe the turning point in terms of international profile and sheer star power was the incredible constellation of talent who joined him for Monk on Monk the album that was released in 1997 and which opens with a tune his father namechecked him on, ‘Little Rootie Tootie.’

The Monk competition for 2018 has just announced its semi-finalists and T. S. says that the key thing about the competition is to make the young players “marketplace ready’’ and so never enough for them to get just “a medal or trophy’’. The prize comes with a Concord records contract and proven knack of putting musicians out there in the global spotlight.

The Institute behind the awards which operates on a number of levels including at a tertiary level has mentored some stars to have emerged in the last 20 years including the Beninese guitar god Lionel Loueke who has been a fixture in Herbie Hancock’s band for many years as well as starring in his own superb albums on Blue Note particularly. Monk points out that the institute wants to avoid an overly Eurocentric musicological approach because jazz is not like that: you learn from the masters he says, person to person. “You hang out.’’ He says he learned being around his father, around Duke Ellington, Willie 'the Lion' Smith, hanging with Miles, the finest jazz musicians. ‘‘Jazz is a philosophy above all.’’

T. S. Monk photo: Matthew Webber