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Jazz titan Rollins is still on a roll
Date published: 5/15/2009
By MARTIN WISCKOL The Orange County Register Sonny Rollins is a model of aging with wisdom and grace, but even those qualities are overshadowed by a towering artistry that's as vibrant as ever. The 78-year-old tenor saxophonist may be the last of the jazz titans, but he plays like he still has something to prove. Rollins lives alone in a 150-year-old farmhouse in Germantown, New York, a reminder that he has long found opportunities to duck away from the world--including extended sabbaticals in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout it all, music has been the overarching activity of his life, and his commitment to creativity continues unabated. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT "I've always practiced a lot," said Rollins, talking on the phone from his kitchen. "I'm not secure that what I'm playing is always going to go right. That's why I practice every day--that and so I'll have more ways to play. There are things I haven't figured out yet. "I think I'm getting closer to being what I can be. I think I'm playing better than I ever have." Bear in mind that Rollins was playing with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Bud Powell and Art Blakey 50 years ago, while still a teenager. By the late 1950s, he was leading his own groups and winning jazz polls. In 1973, he was elected to the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame. But listen to his recent albums--particularly "Sonny, Please" and "Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert)"--or catch him live, and you'll likely hear a musician playing with bountiful beauty, invention and an uncanny directness. In the post-Coltrane era of jazz, stellar musicians like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter have blossomed. But as jazz weathered the diffusing winds of rock and of free improvisation in the 1960s, a certain standing--a cultural bearing--of being a jazz master was left behind to previous generations. Rollins is the last of those giants. A GREAT GETS HIS START He grew up in New York, picking up the saxophone at the age of 7 and immediately developing an affinity. "As a little boy, I'd play and play and play, in reverie, until my mother called me to dinner," he said.
Date published: 5/15/2009
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