\n<\/p>\n
Walter Theodore Rollins: the \u201csaxophone colossus<\/a>.\u201d Jazz\u2019s Prometheus, its Siddhartha and its heavyweight champ. Or, as Nate Chinen once put it in a New York Times review<\/a> of one of Rollins\u2019s marathon-like concerts, \u201cthe great unflagging sovereign of the tenor saxophone.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up in 1940s Harlem, Sonny Rollins idolized swing-era heavyweights like Coleman Hawkins and jump-blues saxophonists like Louis Jordan. But when he heard Charlie Parker and the torrid improvisations of Parker\u2019s bebop revolution<\/a>, which was overtaking Harlem\u2019s clubs, Rollins\u2019s world changed. \u201cHe was going against the grain,\u201d Rollins is quoted saying of Parker in \u201cSaxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins,\u201d Aidan Levy\u2019s authoritative biography<\/a>. \u201cHighly intricate, involved, complicated, intellectual.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For Rollins, bebop\u2019s emphasis on physical tenacity and fast-paced intellect became a personal religion. Many of the tunes he wrote have become jazz standards \u2014 including some on the list below, like \u201cSt. Thomas,\u201d \u201cOleo\u201d and \u201cAiregin\u201d \u2014 but as soon as he composed them, he invariably set about tearing them apart, recasting them, allowing the substance to push against the limits of its own form until it burst, and then to see how that bursting could be multiplied.<\/p>\n Sonny Rollins\u2019s sound is as uncapturable as it is memorable, so you\u2019re left with nothing to do except to keep on listening<\/em>. In the same way that, over his seven-decade career and across more than 60 albums, Rollins wanted nothing more than to simply keep playing<\/em>. Rollins, who will turn 95 this summer, has not performed publicly since 2012, for health reasons. But he remains indefatigable as a listener. Interviews with him are still liable to veer toward his favorite contemporary saxophonists \u2014 some of whom weigh in on the list below.<\/p>\n Read on for a ride through Rollins\u2019s catalog, guided by a team of musicians, scholars and critics. Find playlists embedded below, and don\u2019t forget to leave your own favorites in the comments.<\/p>\n One performance I keep coming back to is Sonny Rollins playing \u201c<\/em>A Weaver of Dreams\u201d<\/em> in this early video. There\u2019s something so honest in his sound \u2014 it\u2019s raw but lyrical, and you can feel that he\u2019s already searching, even at a young age. What really speaks to me is his use of space and phrasing. He\u2019s not trying to impress; he\u2019s listening, reacting, letting the melody unfold in real time. That kind of patience and presence is something I strive for in my own playing. He finds depth in simplicity, and that\u2019s so powerful. You hear the roots of what would become his voice: how he stretches time, how he plays with<\/em> the changes, not just over them. For me, that performance is a reminder that expression doesn\u2019t have to be big or flashy. Sometimes just one note, played with intention, can say everything. That\u2019s what makes Sonny so special.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sonny Rollins, live in 1959 \u2014 phew! This trio performance (with Henry Grimes on bass and Pete La Roca on drums) is from a show in Stockholm during his last tour before the self-imposed two-year sabbatical of practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge. It\u2019s Newk<\/a> at the pinnacle of a certain set of his powers: the intensity, the muscularity, the humor, the rigor, the danger, the daring, the playfulness, the lyricism, the narrative flow, the thematic development, the architectural unity, the freewheeling abandon. The groove is so fierce, the swing so palpable, that you can\u2019t help but feel it in your bones. And yet the melodies are so infectious, the ideas so clear, that you can\u2019t help but sing (or, in the case of La Roca, shout!) along in unbridled joy. It\u2019s a near-perfect, but still completely off-the-cuff, marriage of form and content. Anyone who claims not to \u201cget\u201d jazz might give this one a quick listen. Sonny is speaking to us, telling us a story, taking us on a journey. He\u2019s making it up as he goes, but it makes total logical sense. It\u2019s a trip full of twists and turns, bumps and jolts, surprise and intrigue; but with Rollins & Co. in the driver\u2019s seat, it just feels so darn good. And we are oh-so-lucky to be along for this ride.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Rollins composed \u201cThe Freedom Suite\u201d in 1957, when he had reached the pinnacle of the jazz world, but couldn\u2019t find a landlord who would rent him an apartment in New York. Sonny Stitt helped him find one in a multiethnic enclave on the Lower East Side. Yet the piece that this ordeal in housing discrimination inspired represents the only kind of \u201csuite\u201d where he found true freedom \u2014 a musical suite of Ellingtonian proportions. His childhood neighbor, W.E.B. Du Bois, motivated his self-penned liner notes, a 53-word exhortation<\/a> with pithy parallelisms and rhetorical flourishes a la Frederick Douglass. Its epigrammatic concision belies the piece\u2019s expansive four movements \u2014 a near-20-minute motivic journey built on a four-bar melody line resembling a propulsive mountaintop ascent, then descent, orchestrated for the bassist Oscar Pettiford and the drummer Max Roach in the liberating pianoless trio format Rollins made famous. This is the first major civil rights-themed concept album of the hard bop era, blazing a trail for Roach and Abbey Lincoln\u2019s \u201cFreedom Now Suite\u201d <\/em>in 1960. Still, 67 years after its revolutionary release, Rollins\u2019s prophetic words have renewed resonance: How ironic that African American artists, who have \u201cexemplified the humanities\u201d in their very existence, are being \u201crewarded with inhumanity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I like Sonny\u2019s free, almost playful approach to improvising, and how he uses his composition \u201cOleo\u201d as a vehicle here. I also like the combination of Don Cherry<\/a> on trumpet and Sonny on saxophone, along with the bassist Bob Cranshaw and the drummer Billy Higgins. Everybody makes a unified contribution to this 25-minute version of \u201cOleo.\u201d I mean, they wind up morphing into playing a blues, because Cranshaw and Billy keep changing tempos, and it just sort of ramps up! There\u2019s continuous movement, and there\u2019s always something interesting going on. Playing with Cherry especially brings out another aspect to Sonny\u2019s playing. He sounds like he\u2019s almost part of Ornette Coleman\u2019s group, actually, in parts of this track. So you have Ornette\u2019s influence there with Don Cherry, and I think that\u2019s what Sonny was looking for. Because he liked Ornette\u2019s playing<\/a> too.<\/p>\n Sonny has called himself a free improviser, even though he could play in tempos. The way he plays is always interesting. He makes everything count. He\u2019s making these statements continuously, and it\u2019s like a stream of consciousness. That\u2019s one of Sonny\u2019s artistic gifts. And you know, he\u2019s able to own what he plays \u2014 whatever he decides to play, he puts his stamp on it.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n When we hail Sonny Rollins as a master improviser, we often talk about his inarguable genius for motivic development over a form. But there\u2019s another aspect to his mastery \u2014 a more volatile, Promethean quality, along the outside margin of control. You can hear him balance both sides of the equation on this version of the standard \u201cAutumn Nocturne,\u201d from a 1978 concert in San Francisco. Rollins opens with a spontaneous prelude, forecasting the song\u2019s melody within the first 20 seconds. What follows is an existential hero\u2019s journey, as Rollins pushes the limits of physical endurance and creative capacity, chasing the speed of thought. As always, he\u2019s wittily allusive \u2014 among his partial quotations is the Civil War parlor ballad \u201cHome, Sweet Home,\u201d around 3:35 \u2014 and intently focused on the moment at hand. Four minutes in, he hits a high C and staggers down the chromatic scale, then up again, turning a simple exercise into a dramatic act. Then he cues the band and dives into the song, as if finally reaching a far-off destination. The spirit of release has everything to do with how we got there.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify,<\/em><\/a> <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It may be a popular pick, but I have long been enamored with \u201cSt. Thomas.\u201d On the studio version \u2014 that iconic first track from \u201cSaxophone Colossus\u201d \u2014 he takes us across his own generational history, builds on multiple melodies and carries us across the diaspora through his use of calypso rhythms. I think it\u2019s gorgeous and essential listening for good reason \u2014 whimsical, energetic, beautiful and most of all masterful, which are defining words for Sonny Rollins\u2019s career. The Schomburg Center<\/a> holds the entire Sonny Rollins archive; this piece of music, which is included in our manuscripts collection, can easily become a gateway to the breadth of his incredible work.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Sonny Rollins\u2019s influence has been his delivery, and his harmonic expertise \u2014 you know, just the way he improvises. His improvisational acumen is just perfection. I\u2019ve been wanting to talk to him recently, and what I want to tell him is this: All these years, we as musicians have been listening to \u201cSt. Thomas,\u201d and I\u2019ve played it \u2014 but I hadn\u2019t really sat down and listened <\/em>to his solo. The first verse, he played a calypso feel, and after that he soloed over a 4\/4 swing \u2014 and each one of those choruses was brilliant! I just took it for granted. I never sat down and really listened to what he\u2019d played. It\u2019s magnificent \u2014 all over the horn, very inventive.<\/p>\n And he made his mark as a composer, as well as an improviser. \u201cAiregin\u201d was another one of his great contributions to the collective songbook \u2014 that\u2019s \u201cNigeria\u201d spelled backward, and it\u2019s one of his great compositions. People have played it to the extent that it has become a standard, just like \u201cSt. Thomas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This track feels more like a poignant lament and contemplation than a straight-up ballad, and resides on my heavy-rotation list. Part of the soundtrack for the 1966 film \u201cAlfie,\u201d it has an interesting two-chapter provenance. The interludes that we hear in the actual film were composed by Sonny and recorded in London in 1965 with a small group of British musicians. These spare motifs (including the framework for this tune) were used as short scene segues. Three months later, Rollins went into Rudy Van Gelder\u2019s studio to record the official album soundtrack. Akin to Picasso\u2019s underdrawings as foundation for his paintings, Sonny\u2019s original themes were expanded upon by Sonny with arrangements by Oliver Nelson for a stellar 11-piece band. \u201cHe\u2019s Younger Than You Are\u201d was transformed into a sublime, noirish tableau with a woodwind section (including Phil Woods) and Roger Kellaway\u2019s delicate piano as perfect starlight\/twilight. The convergence of Nelson\u2019s lush orchestration and Sonny\u2019s pure and mournful phrasing is as good as it gets. Pardon my foolish heart for the observation that Rollins\u2019s plaintive voicings and his finale of bold anguish conjure a far more sophisticated movie with a proper denouement \u2014 perhaps even the late arrival of the conscience of the ever-shameless Alfie.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Experiencing Sonny Rollins live could often be an unparalleled, transcendent experience, unlike anything laid down in the recording studio. Sifting through memories of the Saxophone Colossus\u2019 concerts that I\u2019ve been privileged to attend, then carefully checking my personal stash of Sonny\u2019s recordings, I kept coming back to one performance. As someone who\u2019s had a weekly radio show for five decades now, I had assiduously marked off key tracks for airplay. But I kept coming back to Sonny\u2019s incredible 1986 performance in Saugerties, N.Y., beautifully captured for posterity by the filmmaker Robert Mugge, and the subsequent Milestone album<\/a>. The film includes Rollins\u2019s miraculous, herculean improvisation on \u201cG-Man.\u201d That monument was followed by Sonny\u2019s tune \u201cKim,\u201d on which Sonny became so enraptured in an improvisational whirlwind that he somehow misjudged the distance from the stone stage to the surrounding moat, and leaped the nearly six-foot stage in such a state of apparent ecstasy that he suffered a broken heel! Miraculously, flat on his back, he continued improvising!<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s the fall, September of 1999, the beginning of my junior year of high school. I would switch from alto sax in the band to playing tenor saxophone, a request made by my band director after a number of tenor saxophonists graduated the previous year. I was now a tenor player. As a high schooler I was moved that Sonny Rollins was still recording and speaking to an early-2000s generation and the music sounded as such, with funky grooves, etc. The record that had a profound impact on my life was \u201cThis Is What I Do,\u201d released May 2000, the end of my junior year of high school. I was struck by the music, the title, and to a young 16-year-old J.B.L. the CD cover was as slick as the music: Sonny with some cool shades on. I was drawn to \u201cDid <\/em>You See Harold Vick?,\u201d which is a master class in motivic development. The improvisation never repeats, keeping you on your toes while the melodic line twists and turns. Sonny proclaims with this album title and sound of this track the freedom of individuality. This is a freedom I reach for, one that asks: What is it that I do musically?<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n During his first 30 years on record and in concert, Sonny Rollins altered his tenor saxophone sound from craggy to smooth with a dozen gradations along the way, yet always remained distinct. But around 1978 (\u201cAutumn Nocturne,\u201d for example), he perfected a sound like no other, conversational, munificent, fueled by the cavernous echo of experience \u2014 a sound that chortles, croons and pulls you in. \u201cManakoora\u201d was composed for John Ford\u2019s 1937 film \u201cThe Hurricane\u201d by Alfred Newman and the rookie lyricist Frank Loesser. Rollins used it as a kind of epilogue on his penultimate studio recording, the neglected masterpiece \u201cThis Is What I Do,\u201d in 2000. He phrases the insistent theme like a Circean island-waltz, beginning his variations with fragments that are spun into an expansive veil, lifted on waves generated by Bob Cranshaw and Jack DeJohnette. His solo is complemented by a cunning, perfectly paired response by Stephen Scott, one of the most accomplished pianists of the \u201990s, long since drawn into the groves of academe; Sonny returns for a final aloha. No thrill-ride here, no cadenza, just laid-back perfection.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Listen on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Spotify<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Apple Music<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018A Weaver of Dreams\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n
Melissa Aldana, saxophonist<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018St. Thomas\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n
Joshua Redman, saxophonist<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018The Freedom Suite\u2019<\/h2>\n
Aidan Levy, Rollins biographer and scholar<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Oleo\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n
Jack DeJohnette, drummer<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\nFind the playlist on Spotify and Apple Music:<\/em><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u2018Autumn Nocturne\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n
Nate Chinen, critic and author<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018St. Thomas\u2019<\/h2>\n
Joy Bivins, Schomburg Center director<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Airegin\u2019<\/h2>\n
George Coleman, saxophonist<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018He\u2019s Younger Than You Are\u2019<\/h2>\n
Carol Friedman, photographer<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018G-Man\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n
Willard Jenkins, author and festival director<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Did You See Harold Vick?\u2019<\/h2>\n
James Brandon Lewis, saxophonist<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018The Moon of Manakoora\u2019<\/h2>\n
Gary Giddins, critic and author<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\u25c6 \u25c6 \u25c6<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Sonnymoon for Two\u2019 (live)<\/h2>\n