Jazz Articles about Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins: Ten Colossal Albums

by Chris May
April 6, 2022

The history of modern jazz is a short one, but even so there are few musicians whose careers began in the bop era and who are still with us in 2022. Drummer Roy Haynes is one. Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins is another. Both players recorded with trumpeter Fats Navarro and pianist Bud Powell in 1949. Born in 1930, Rollins grew up in Harlem, in Sugar Hill, a neighbourhood full of the city's best jazz musicians. By the ...

Kimberly Hannon Teal: Jazz Places, Space For Everybody?

by Ian Patterson
February 24, 2022

Behind the bricks and mortar of any jazz venue, large or small, lies an often complex history, a set of codes, expectations and ideologies, projected both both from within and from without. Old school, traditional, cutting edge, avant-garde, mainstream--different venues convey meanings and associations that align with different and often competing strands of jazz history. In her fascinating book Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History (University of California Press, 2021), Kimberly Hannon Teal, Assistant ...

Chianti Classico Meets Sonny Rollins

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
August 28, 2021

Restraint: Chianti Classico Meets Sonny Rollins

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
August 18, 2021

Welcome to August's Jazz & Juice—I'm looking forward to diving into some new wine and music with you, moving from the Loire Valley and Mary Lou Williams (here's a link to the article, video, and podcast if you'd like to catch up) and into the world of Italy and one of jazz's greatest tenor saxophonists. RestraintRestraint implies patience—the ability not to quickly react to something, and when it comes to any craft, what one chooses to do, or ...

Sonny Rollins: Rollins in Holland

by Mike Jurkovic
December 30, 2020

From the very first decibel of this unrealistically good, previously unreleased recording, Sonny Rollins bears no bones to inform listeners he is suffering no fools. It is a big, Buescher, bellwether sound, the one that gave Rollins the sound and spirit he needed to tell of a man taking it all on without apology. It is also meant to say that, without argument, unrealistically good here is totally understood as a decisively human characteristic and not necessarily one Rollins aspired ...

Sonny Rollins and Bill Evans: Icons In Action

by Doug Collette
December 4, 2020

As icons of contemporary jazz, saxophonist Sonny Rollins and pianist Bill Evans deserve the carefully-researched and fastidiously-annotated packages Resonance Records has created in the form of Rollins In Holland and Live At Ronnie Scott's. The curators and producers for the label aim to formulate releases in line with each man's exacting approach, so while it is true many such vault titles are already available in the marketplace, it's fairly safe to say few are as rare or thorough as this ...

Big September Birthdays & More

by Marc Cohn
October 9, 2020

We celebrate big September birthdays this week on G&M: Ray Charles, Muhal Richard Abrams and Sonny Rollins @ 90; Gary Bartz, Hamiet Bluiet, Dave Burrell and Roy Ayers @ 80! Of course, we have more: Horace Silver, Wilbur Ware, Elvin Jones, Sam Rivers, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. So many of the greats and near-greats celebrate in September. There's not enough time to recognize or remember them all. But I decided to focus on the big birthday celebrants. You only ...