Don't forget Sonny rollins.

[Hardbopjazz]

He will be playing tomorrow at Lincoln Center. The best thing about it, it's free.

Sonny Rollins

[Dmitry]

I caught that gig a couple of years ago. Make sure to come 2 hours before the scheduled start time. That's no joke. Place will be packed.

Personally, I'm all calypsoed out on Sonny.

Too bad I couldn't make that Jimmy Scott-Ahmad Jamal gig last Friday. We had our place painted. Oy.

[Hardbopjazz]

I should get thete around 3PM. Should be enough time to get a good seat.

[John L]

Sonny who?

[B. Goren.]

Will you be kind enough to tell us how was it???

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Not exceptional. The band was Rollins, Clifton Anderson, Bob Cranshaw - the three of them have been together for 20 years, Rollins and Cranshaw for over 40 (on and off). The drummer was Steve Jordan and the percussionist was Kimati Dinizulu. No piano, no guitar.

First tune was the traditional warmer-upper where Sonny plays an extended solo. He was OK but the tune itself was boring as hell. The perpetual bassline had three notes in it. I can't imagine how Cranshaw can play the exact same line for whatever - 15 minutes or more. Exact same line. No bridge, no interlude, nothing. Over and over and over. Rollins was going through all kinds of patterns, moving them through keys, sort of thinking aloud. But other times I've seen him, the opener is where he would really build the intensity. I recall a C minor blues opener that went on for easily 30 minutes - all Rollins solo, no one else. When they ended that, the audience exploded. That kind of energy was not present this evening.

Let's see, after that, Rollins played a newer tune called "C E A" which I think refers to the chords in it. Again, not an interesting composition, but a little moreso than the first.

After that, I forget - but Rollins stopped playing solos and when it was his turn he instead did trades with the drums. Clifton Anderson took some long solos and played well, I think better than I've ever heard him. Usually he was just extraneous because Sonny would blow for ages and he'd stand around, then take a couple of choruses and out.

There was the expected calypso - thankfully just the one (unlike another Damrosch Park show where he played like four of them), but it was a welcome change and I think this is where we got a long percussion solo, ending up with Dinizulu playing cajon.

I think the next tune was "They Say It's Wonderful" and this was easily the high point of the evening. It was really the only straight-ahead changes tune. If I remember correctly, Rollins played some fours after the head, then Anderson soloed. Then Rollins came back and played a long long solo - of the kind we are accustomed to hearing, where he wraps it up, then keeps going, chorus after chorus. In the past, he was playing at this kind of level as sort of a baseline.

The encore was Tenor Madness, kind of perfunctory. I think there was a short theme after that to close things out as well.

Some noticable absences: no circular breathing, no repeated low B-flat honks. I also miss the kind of repertoire he used to do, where you could hear great TUNES. Please raise your hand if you can recall three Rollins compositions from the past 10 years. I can't.

I wasn't thrilled with Steve Jordan and I thought a percussionist was superfluous.

Not the worst Rollins show I've seen, but definitely not the best.

Mike

[B. Goren.]

Thank you Mike.

[Hardbopjazz]

I was there, Mike hit it on the head, and the show was just, OK. Sonny just played and he didn't do any of his patented sounds he is so well know for. Still for a man who will be turning 74 in less then a month, he still plays with full intensity.

It’s Sonny Rollins. If he wants to mellow it out or play tunes with 2 or 3 cord chances, he can. He’s done just about everything. But I’ve seen him play better.

[JSngry]

74 is old, especially in tenor years...

[JSngry]

And I don't mean that as an "excuse" or anything. I just mean that the way Sonny plays is a lot more physically demanding than some might realize. It's a miracle/blessing/whatever that he's still out there doing it. I heard the tone start to "hollow out" on GLOBAL WARMING, and it had me wondering if maybe the end was near. Luckily, it wasn't, and still isn't, hopefully. But it's WORK, genuine hard physical labor, to play like Sonny does.

How Von Freeman does what he does at HIS age is even more miraculous....

[JSngry]

Love the white neckstrap, too. Works quite nicely with the rest of the ensemble.

[Hardbopjazz]

And I don't mean that as an "excuse" or anything. I just mean that the way Sonny plays is a lot more physically demanding than some might realize. It's a miracle/blessing/whatever that he's still out there doing it. I heard the tone start to "hollow out" on GLOBAL WARMING, and it had me wondering if maybe the end was near. Luckily, it wasn't, and still isn't, hopefully. But it's WORK, genuine hard physical labor, to play like Sonny does.

How Von Freeman does what he does at HIS age is even more miraculous....

Yes, very true. He did a solo on one number for about 20 minutes. None stop, and at all ends of the resistor, high and low.

[Hardbopjazz]

Another shot from the show.

[RDK]

Mediocre show or not, I'm jealous. I've gotta see that cat live one of these days.

I hear he's an okay player... B-)

[Hardbopjazz]

I hear he's an okay player... B-)

Sonny on a bad day is still better then most tenor players.

[BruceH]

74 is old, especially in tenor years...

One calender year=1.5 tenor years. That means Rollins is 111 in tenor years. It's amazing he can even walk.

[Free For All]

One calender year=1.5 tenor years. 

I guess that's what you'd call Newk's Time.

[Morganized]

I guess that's what you'd call Newk's Time.

LOL

[brownie]

Ben Ratliff's review of the concert in The New York Times today:

August 12, 2004

FESTIVAL REVIEW

For a Moment, Sonny Rollins Shows Fans His Intimate Side

By BEN RATLIFF

When Sonny Rollins fulfills the role of Sonny Rollins - tall, powerful jazz improviser, bringer of catharsis - he goes on and on. His improvisations are a long process, and the power and invention of his harmonic and rhythmic ideas accumulate as the minutes tick by.

In his performance at Damrosch Park on Tuesday night, part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors series, that logic was challenged. At about 90 minutes, it wasn't one of his epics; in the same park eight years ago, he played for two hours and 20 minutes. Though the higher levels of his playing were intimated here and there - and once, briefly, actually broached - this was a modest concert, even a disappointing one.

What he showed on Tuesday was a workable, scaled-back version of his own legend. (Give him a break: he's 73.) And in one instance, he showed a true alternative to it. At the middle of the set, Mr. Rollins started a tune with a pleasant melodic line; the drums were played rubato, with mallets. Moody and serene, it kept coming to full stops, little junctures for compressed seconds of soloing, and then resumed with its melody. It was a weird little song - a new number called "Ethel Lou," and a beautiful gesture. For years, Mr. Rollins - one of jazz's few superstars - has favored large crowds rather than small spaces, creating his own form of stadium jazz. But this piquant interlude suggested something much more quiet and personal.

Mr. Rollins's bands continue to be vexing. Steve Jordan, the drummer on Tuesday, has been a studio professional and a mainstay of jazz-fusion bands led by David Sanborn and Michael Becker, among others. He has also worked with Mr. Rollins before, on the 1991 album "Here's to the People." He sounded strong in "Don't Stop the Carnival," the set's calypso, but his swing rhythms - with unchanging patterns on the ride cymbal - were leaden on jazz tunes like "They Say It's Wonderful," and not helped by Bob Crenshaw's plodding walks on electric bass. Kimati Dinimulu, the band's percussionist, worked better; on congas, he combined with Mr. Jordan to thicken up the grooves, and in a long, crowd-pleasing solo, he straddled a cajón, playing patterns at higher and higher pitch.

There was no pianist in the band - a turn of events some Rollins-watchers have long wished for, since this is the man who (in the late 1950's) set an early benchmark for piano-less, saxophone-led groups. While the absence of a choral instrument may have put more pressure on Mr. Rollins to play harder and fill up more space with harmony, he had time to rest: there were much longer solos by other band members than have been usual over the last decade.

In "They Say It's Wonderful," Mr. Rollins ran through a long, unfruitful sequence of trading four-bar breaks with Mr. Jordan before he finally began to solo continuously and approach incantational mode. And finally he showed more of who he was. He played strong, full-bodied notes and mewling ones; he feinted with short, inconclusive upward runs; he found some continuous logic for long lines and went the other way toward nubby, repeated riffs, rhythm-and-blues style; he referenced the melodies of a couple of old standards; he played notes with overtones, and found a bouncing point on a single deep, massive foghorn blast. A short encore and an even shorter snippet of "Tenor Madness" followed, and with unusual concision, that was that.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Michael Fitzgerald]

When I spoke with Dan Morgenstern earlier tonight about the show he informed me that there is a new park policy that requires the concerts to be over and done by 10 PM. So the first paragraph of the review is pretty much shot down. There was no chance that we were going to get a concert of epic proportions.

That description of the first tune is bizarre. A pleasant melodic line? A beautiful gesture? Where is the mention of the goddamn incessant bass line? That's what Rollins kept referring to in his solos. He and the bass would link up and Anderson would play harmony to it. As a matter of fact, where the hell is ANY mention of Clifton Anderson???? He's now "other band members"?

Most folks I've talked to who were at the show disagree with the point about the percussion, saying it detracted from rather than enhanced the music.

And again, there is absolutely no comprehension of what's going on with or without stated chords. I'm starting to remember why I dislike reviews. The NYT has cut back drastically on its jazz coverage so I haven't seen much recently, but God, that crappy typical description in the last paragraph is awful.

I'm surprised by all the typos in the article - Michael Becker? Bob Crenshaw? Kimati Dinimulu? Absence of a choral instrument? Perhaps this is an unedited advance version? Even so, I'd think it wouldn't take an editor to get such things right.

Mike

[cannonball-addict]

Is it just me or has Sonny's tone spread wider and wider over the years. I went to a concert he did a few years back in DC at Carter Barron Amphitheatre (I don't know how in G-d's name they could afford him - he is so removed from today's jazz world and especially the business part of it, it wouldn't surprise me if he's still using rates from the 60s) and his sound was totally out of his control. Was he a smoker? Or is it age? The same can be said for Von Freeman's sound today (though his tone always kind of wavered off pitch as part of his package).

Don't get me wrong. I love Sonny. One of my first records was A Night at The Village Vanguard, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to put all this praise on a guy who hasn't really been doing anything special since the 60s? I wish he would get out on the road more often. Work with some different cats maybe....Look what the Heath brothers have done with Jeb Patton, breathing youth into their group. Roy Haynes has done the same thing. But we're dealing with a guy who's always been removed from the whole PR/record label/jazz icon part of the business. I guess it's a lost cause to want him to do what Wayne Shorter and these other elder statemen are doing.

matt

[bertrand]

Not to be an apologist for Ratliff (far from it), but I've seen Cranshaw referred to as 'Crenshaw' on album/CD covers before. I think I detected the pattern that he was 'Crenshaw' on his first few Blue Note dates, then they corrected it once and for all; I'm pretty sure I've seen him referred to as 'Crenshaw' on other labels as well. I assume this is sloppiness on Blue Note's part (Grachan Moncur was 'Gracham' on Hancock's My Point Of View).

Fortunately, I have never seen 'Art Blakely' on any CD; if I ever see this on a Blue Note release, I may have to vow to boycott the label.

Bertrand.

[Alon Marcus]

Please raise your hand if you can recall three Rollins compositions from the past 10 years. I can't.

Well I must raise my hand cause the opening calypso from Global Warming is quite catchy and actually I was whistling it while reading the thread.

[JSngry]

Is it just me or has Sonny's tone spread wider and wider over the years.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. I disagree. Totally.

Things spread as you get older, trust me. A tone should be no exception.

I really do NOT like "today's" tenor sound, which is all tight and so highly focused and devoid of depth that, yes, it cuts with laser beam precision, but it leaves no residue, in either the ear or the soul (my opinion). Like a laser beam, it comes strongly, but it leaves just as quickly. BOO!

Give me a FAT sound, one that's been lived in, one that fills the entire room with its breadth (not it volume) and leaves a big glob of character on everything it comes into contact with, even tangentally. It's a TENOR, God's instrument, not a little analog sound generator that puts out generic beams of sound. Put someting into it or else switch to alto.

[JSngry]

Please raise your hand if you can recall three Rollins compositions from the past 10 years. I can't.

"Did You See Harold Vick"

"Clear Cut Boogie"

"Island Lady"

"Echo Side Blue"