![]() That level of playing was what led Marsalis to run out of word choices. There were nights when he could lead his band for four hours without coming close to earth. Levy quotes enough musicians and critics throughout the course of this book to imply that those times I saw him were more in the middle than near the peak of his concert performances. Two of those performances included half-hour long single tunes in which the man played chorus after chorus after chorus, breaking through to a place where music transcends time and space to become pure ecstasy. For Rollins, the golden rule found in so many religious sources is a constant goal.įor as long as he was playing tenor saxophone, though, his other goal was to reach the space in music that he felt he never quite accomplished. Though Rollins has not been able to play his horn for over ten years, thanks to pulmonary fibrosis which could very well have been triggered by the toxic air he breathed in for two days after 9/11/01 when he lived six blocks from the World Trade Center, he has continued to grow as a person. Built on meticulous research into virtually every article ever written about the great man, along with interviews with Rollins himself and as many people who played with him or knew him as could be rounded up alive in the last seven years, not to mention access to letters and papers written by Rollins and his wife Lucille, this book explores the musical and spiritual development of a magnificent musician across the first 92 years of his life. I was kind of looking forward to seeing the shows I saw included – the 1985 Webster College appearance is at least mentioned, but his appearance at Mississippi Nights a few years later, and the one at the Touhill Performing Arts Center in 2009 don’t make the cut.īut Saxophone Colossus is much more than a list of names and dates. ![]() For a long time, I was convinced Levy was going to mention every single place and approximate date Rollins played or recorded. This new book is as detailed a chronological story of a musician’s life as you can find. The onstage meeting of the legendary performer, then age 52, and the fresh-faced young lion trumpeter, then age 22, takes place a little past the half-way point of this monumental new biography of Rollins.Īidan Levy wrote a previous biography of Lou Reed, which I’m now curious to read. “Sonny Rollins, man!” Wynton Marsalis has rarely been at a loss for words, but backstage June 4, 1983, at the Beacon Theater in New York City where he had just been treated to a demonstration of improvisational skill and ideas by the great tenor saxophonist, this was all he could say.
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