NYT: Dwight Garner reviews The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins

[Mark Stryker]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/books/review/notebooks-of-sonny-rollins.html?fbclid=IwAR0UO3n4ukr1HeeyloH2OYz9sX4hdjFSdCL_NPvZkGZCGbdPpXTlbsTSUDk_aem_AQ_dwiYCMCiJM3Te_hrLKGsze893Wx77MCS_oGByPmBhnV4P4r_D2qBBpDgzpNVhWgQ

Edited March 18, 2024 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

My preorder arrived yesterday. I'm about halfway through it, it's mostly easy reading, but I can tell that it was assembled/ edited by a non-musician. There's a comprehension/coherency issue that is possibly going to bewilder people who have no experience with a saxophone. Detailed discussions about technique cut away to philosophical commentary without warning, and the go right back again.

Still, if you do know something about a saxophone, there is some wonderful stuff in here (especially about the potential for a mystical experience with multiphonics). And the philosophy shows a consistent and expanding thread from beginning to end.

A patient reader will enjoy this, I thinks. An impatient reader...Sonny Rollins is probably not for impatient people, readers or otherwise.