Listen to WCOM-FM (www.wcomfm.org), Chapel Hill-Carrboro, North Carolina, October 7, 2012, from 9pm to 12 midnight, for The Thelonious Monk Birthday Special with host Larry Reni Thomas. The program will feature three hours of Nina Simone’s music and the premiere of an audio documentary called “Nina Simone: The Great North Carolina Jazz Intellectual.”

It features commentary and analysis from Jim Ketch, a trumpet player and a jazz studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Larry Ridley, a bassist and former director of the Rutgers University’s jazz studies department, and Durham, North Carolina-based vocalist Nnenna Freelon, who considers Simone one of her early inspirations, .

The documentary is part of a four part series dedicated to North Carolina native jazz musicians and includes profiles of Thelonious Monk, Max Roach and John Coltrane. .

For more information about The Nina Simone Birthday Special,go to: carolinajazzconnectionwithlarrythomas.blogspot.com.