Saturday, September 7, 2013

HAPPY 83RD BIRTHDAY TO THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS SONNY ROLLINS!


More examples of why Sonny Rollins is considered to be one of the greatest and most significant improvisors in the history of 20th/21st century music. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQV8yReZQY8SONNY ROLLINS TRIO;

Sonny Rollins--Tenor Saxophone
Niels-Henning Orsted Petersen--Bass
Alan Dawson--Drums

LIVE IN MUNICH GERMANY IN 1965:

Order of musical compositions played in this legendary One hour 24 minute set by the Sonny Rollins Trio:

00:01 - There will never be another you 11:15 - St Thomas 23:45 - Oleo 36:39 - Sonny Moon for Two 44:56 - Darn that Dream 48:44 - Three little words 54:34 - On green dolphin street 1:06:00 - St Thomas (Again with piano) 1:16:27 - Four



SELECTIONS FROM THE IMMORTAL MUSIC OF SONNY ROLLINS (1955-PRESENT):


"Oleo" by Sonny Rollins

Live performance in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1965

Sonny Rollins--Tenor Saxophone
Niels-Henning Orsted Petersen--Bass
Alan Dawson--Drums


Sonny Rollins Trio at the Village Vanguard 
1957

"Softly As in a Morning Sunrise" 

Sonny Rollins--Tenor Saxophone
Wilbur Ware--Bass
Elvin Jones--Drums


 Sonny Rollins Trio　
Live 1963

Sonny Rollins--Tenor Saxophone
Niels-Henning Orsted Petersen--Bass
Alan Dawson--Drums


Sonny Rollins - YouTube

Sonny Rollins - Tenor Madness - YouTube
► 2:07

Sonny Rollins - St. Thomas - YouTube
► 10:28

Sonny Rollins Alfie's Theme 1973 - YouTube
► 7:30

Sonny Rollins - It Don't Mean a Thing - YouTube
► 4:26
Sonny ROLLINS à Marseille 25 juillet 2012 - YouTube
► 12:43

Way Out West - Sonny Rollins [FULL ALBUM] [HQ] - YouTube
► 43:08

Sonny Rollins - St.Thomas (Original) 1956 - YouTube
► 6:49

1.
Sonny Rollins Interview - YouTube
► 13:54
2.
Sonny Rollins - All The Things You Are - YouTube
► 6:46
3.
Sonny Rollins 5tet - Don't Stop The Carnival [1985] - YouTube
► 10:08
Kursaal, Bern (Switzerland) May 10, 1985 ("10. Internationales Jazzfestival Bern" ) Sonny ...
4.
Sonny Rollins, Saxophonist: Strode Rode - 4/30/09 - YouTube
► 4:31
http://www.sonnyrollins.com/ presents warm up, sound check and performance by the saxophone ...
5.
Sonny Rollins Quartet - St. Thomas - YouTube
► 6:53
Sonny Rollins Quartet - St. Thomas (1956) Personnel: Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Tommy ...
6.
SONNY ROLLINS.St. Thomas - YouTube
► 6:49
Personnel: Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Tommy Flanagan (piano); Doug Watkins (bass ...
7.
Extended Interview: Sonny Rollins - YouTube
► 5:59
F
8.
Sonny Rollins 6tet - Long Ago and Far Away [1992] - YouTube
► 23:15
Philharmonie im Gasteig - München (Germany) May 6, 1992 Sonny Rollins - Tenor ...
9.
Sonny Rollins - Global Warming (Finland, 1998) - YouTube
► 7:54
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdjHUtohEEcNov 19, 2006 - 8 min - Uploaded by migmarfin
Sonny Rollins with his band playing a cheerful calypso tune "Global Warming" at the April ...
10.
Sonny Rollins-Where are you - YouTube
► 5:14
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6kR9-OQ1-oMar 18, 2010 - 5 min The Bridge - Sonny Rollins-ts, Jim Hall-g, Bob Cranshaw-b, Ben Riley-d.



SONNY ROLLINS AND HIS TENOR SAXOPHONE


THE ALWAYS ELEGANT MR. ROLLINS CELEBRATING HIS 78TH BIRTHDAY IN 2008

SONNY ROLLINS
(b. September 7, 1930)

TODAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2013 IS THE 83rd BIRTHDAY OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND BELOVED MUSICIANS OF THE PAST CENTURY, MR. THEODORE WALTER "SONNY" ROLLINS

Theodore Walter "Sonny " Rollins

2011 Kennedy Center Honoree


HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONNY!




FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES


(Originally posted January 1, 2012):

Sunday, January 1, 2012

BEHOLD: SONNY ROLLINS, THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS!


Sonny Rollins--The Official Website of the Saxophone Colossus

All,

In the incredibly rich pantheon of African American art and culture there have been many legendary musical artists from the Jazz tradition who through their prodigious art have dramatically changed the very course of cultural history in the modern world. These astonishing and truly revolutionary figures: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillispie. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Sarah Vaugyhn, Betty Carter, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson, Horace Silver, Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke, Herbie Nichols, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean and Archie Shepp-- just to name a few icons from a HUGE collection of truly extraordinary artists in this always fecund tradition--have played a major role in our fundamental understanding of what exactly constitutes "GREAT ART" in the world. It is this grand, profound, and tirelessly powerful legacy that the living legend and saxophone genius SONNY ROLLINS (b. September 7, 1930) embodies and epitomizes in every improvisational gesture that he expresses and is the very source of his magisterial command of his instrument. A consummate master who continues at age 81 (!) to enthrall and captivate his many listeners around the world, Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins was one of five Kennedy Center Honorees for 2011 on December 3, 2011 (broadcast on CBS television this past tuesday night December 27, 2011). It is in direct response to and heartfelt appreciation for this great honor that the following TRIBUTE TO THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS is made. Long May this GIANT continue to grace our lives with the depth, courage, insight, clarity, beauty, and creative authority that marks his tremendous artistry and his eloquent, humble and generous humanity. SONNYMOON FOR US ALL INDEED...

Kofi

"America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humor, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as its own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in its very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."
--Sonny Rollins
Liner Notes to "Freedom Suite" 1958

SONNYMOON FOR US ALL
(For the greatest saxophonist in the world: Sonny Rollins)

By Kofi Natambu

WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON
WE HEAR SUCH A GLORIOUS TUNE
IT'S ALWAYS A BIT OF A SWOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

THE SONG COULD BE AUGUST OR JUNE
A HELL OF A BURST OR A BOON
WAILING AT MIDNIGHT OR NOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

TRANSVERSING HARMONIC LAGOONS
HE PLAYS THRU OUR FEARS AND OUR WOUNDS
HIS HORN IS A RHYTHMIC PLATOON
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON

I THINK I WILL SOON BE A LOON
OR AT LEAST A RAVING BABOON
IF I DON'T GET TO HEAR SOME MORE TUNES
FROM THAT SOARING MELODIC BALLOON

O ROLLINS BLOWS HEAT CAN BE FIERCE OR SO SWEET

YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON...

FROM THE POETRY VOLUME THE MELODY NEVER STOPS by Kofi Natambu (PAST TENTS PRESS, 1991)


Sonny Rollins was one of five individuals who received the Kennedy Center Honors of 2011.

Along with fellow recipients singer Barbara Cook, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and actress Meryl Streep, Rollins was honored at the 34th annual national celebration of the arts on December 4.

"I am deeply appreciative of this great honor," said Mr. Rollins, "In honoring me, the Kennedy Center honors jazz, America's classical music. For that, I am very grateful."

Other jazz artists who have been Kennedy Center Honorees are: Ella Fitzgerald (1978), Count Basie (1981), Benny Goodman (1982), Dizzy Gillespie (1990), Lionel Hampton (1992), Benny Carter (1996), Quincy Jones (2001), and Dave Brubeck (2009).

The Gala was broadcast on CBS-TV on December 27, 2011 at 9:00-11:00 p.m., ET/PT.


BIOGRAPHY

Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he started out on alto saxophone, inspired by Louis Jordan. At the age of sixteen, he switched to tenor, trying to emulate Hawkins. He also fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, Bebop.

He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.

"Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way," Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. "They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I'm one of the last guys left, as I'm constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people."

In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.

Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography wrote that he "began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill Harlem crowd...anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere else. He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians. Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird. I know one thing--he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off..."

With Clifford Brown and Max Roach, 1956

Sonny moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding elements of negativity around the Jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.

It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,"Newk." As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: "Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or "Newk" as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."

In 1956, Sonny began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomas initiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Blue 7 was hailed by Gunther Schuller as demonstrating a new manner of "thematic improvisation," in which the soloist develops motifs extracted from his theme. Way Out West (1957), Rollins's first album using a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (Wagon Wheels, I'm an Old Cowhand). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.


Rollins's first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance.

Sonny remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because "I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I needed to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do it my way. I wasn't going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time."

When he returned to action in early `62, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60's, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. "I was getting into eastern religions," he remembers. "I've always been my own man. I've always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It's never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it's a good thing for anybody to do."

Lucille and Sonny

In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. (Working at first with Orrin Keepnews, Sonny was by the early ’80s producing his own Milestone sessions with Lucille.) His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label produced two dozen albums in various settings – from his working groups to all-star ensembles (Tommy Flanagan, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams); from a solo recital to tour recordings with the Milestone Jazzstars (Ron Carter, McCoy Tyner); in the studio and on the concert stage (Montreux, San Francisco, New York, Boston). Sonny was also the subject of a mid-’80s documentary by Robert Mugge entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.

He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004’s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for “Why Was I Born”). In addition, Sonny received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.

In June 2006 Rollins was inducted into the Academy of Achievement – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences.

Rollins was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, in November 2009. The award is one of Austria’s highest honors, given to leading international figures for distinguished achievements. The only other American artists who have received this recognition are Frank Sinatra and Jessye Norman.

In 2010 on the eve of his 80th birthday, Sonny Rollins is one of 229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, business, and public affairs who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A center for independent policy research, the Academy is among the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and celebrates the 230th anniversary of its founding this year.

In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field.

Sonny Rollins Receiving National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama at White House in 2010
Photo: Ruth David

Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.”

Since 2006, Rollins has been releasing his music on his own label, Doxy Records (with distribution from the Decca Label Group). The first Doxy album was Sonny, Please, Rollins’s first studio recording since This Is What I Do. That was followed by the acclaimed Road Shows, vol. 1 (2008), the first in a planned series of recordings from Rollins’s audio archives.

Mr. Rollins released Road Shows, vol. 2 in the fall of 2011. In addition to material recorded in Sapporo and Tokyo, Japan during an October 2010 tour, the recording contains several tracks from Sonny’s September 2010 80th birthday concert in New York—including the historic and electrifying encounter with Ornette Coleman.

SONNY ROLLINS ONE OF 10 RECIPIENTS OF 2010 NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS

Saxophonist Sonny Rollins was one of ten honorees who received the 2010 National Medal of Arts for outstanding achievements and support of the arts. The presentation was made on March 2 by President Barack Obama in an East Room ceremony at the White House.

“I’m very happy that jazz, the greatest American music, is being recognized through this honor, and I’m grateful to accept this award on behalf of the gods of our music,” Mr. Rollins said of the award.

The National Medal of Arts recipients represent the many vibrant and diverse art forms thriving in America,” said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. “Sonny Rollins’ melodic sensibilities, playing style, and solos have delighted audiences and influenced generations of musicians for over fifty years and I join the President and the country in saluting him.”
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 2:47 PM

Labels: 2011 Kennedy Center Honors, African American Art, Composition, Improvisation, Jazz history, Sonny Rollins, Tenor Saxophone
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