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I received this press release today:

Sonny Rollins to Appear at Carnegie Hall

Tuesday, September 18,

Marking the 50th Anniversary

Of His Carnegie Debut

Special Trio with Roy Haynes & Christian McBride Will Open Concert

To Reprise Rollins's 1957 Trio Performances at Carnegie

The Entire Concert, Also Featuring Rollins's Regular Group,

Will Be Recorded for 2008 Release on the Saxophonist's Doxy Label;

CD to Include 1957 Trio Material

June 14, 2007

On the evening of November 29, 1957, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, then 27 years old, took to the stage of Carnegie Hall for the first time. Sharing the bill that night with Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, and the Thelonious Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane, Rollins played three songs -- "Moritat," "Sonnymoon for Two," and "Some Enchanted Evening" -- with bassist Wendell Marshall and drummer Kenny Dennis.

Come September 18, 2007, Rollins will mark the 50th anniversary of that milestone in his legendary career by revisiting the same repertoire in the same trio format -- with special guests Roy Haynes on drums and Christian McBride on acoustic bass. Sonny's own Oleo Productions will present the concert, which will also feature a set with his working band of Clifton Anderson, Bobby Broom, Bob Cranshaw, and Kimati Dinizulu.

"We're making a statement with this event," says Rollins. "First of all, the concert is being produced in-house by the musicians, and being recorded for my own label [Doxy]. It's also a validation of the contemporaries that Roy and I played with, and an affirmation of the music we've been involved with all our lives."

A Long-Standing New York Tradition

For a 25-year period beginning in the 1970s, Rollins's special-guest concerts -- produced by Julie Lokin's New Audiences, and usually held at Carnegie Hall (but occasionally at Town Hall or the Beacon Theater instead) -- were perennial highlights of the jazz calendar. Among the musicians to appear as Sonny's guests were old friends and young lions: Terence Blanchard, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Branford Marsalis, Tony Williams, Jim Hall, Grover Washington Jr., Roy Hargrove, Wynton Marsalis. The last such event took place at the Beacon, where Sonny hosted Percy Heath, Walter Bishop Jr., Jackie McLean, Gil Coggins, and Wallace Roney way back in November 1995.

That 12-year hiatus is now over. "Let's take it to the bridge," Roy Haynes says of the September concert. "I can't wait!"

Tickets go on sale Monday, July 30, online at www.carnegiehall.org; by phone (CarnegieCharge) at 212-247-7800; or at the box office at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. The concert recording, to be released in spring 2008 by Doxy Records, will also include the 1957 trio material, a 20-minute tape recently made available to Rollins by the Library of Congress.

Roy Haynes and Sonny Rollins had a number of opportunities to work together early in the tenor saxophonist's career. (Haynes, 82, remembers that the younger Rollins "used to come to my house, but I didn't even know he played an instrument then.") Their first professional encounter was also Rollins's first time in the recording studio, on an April 1949 Babs Gonzales session. Soon to follow were dates with Bud Powell in August 1949, Miles Davis in January 1951, and Sonny's own debut as a leader in that same 1951 session. Haynes was the drummer for Rollins's first Riverside recording, The Sound of Sonny, in June 1957, and for a 1958 Newport Jazz Festival appearance with bassist Henry Grimes. Their final meeting on record came in July 1958, for Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass (MGM).

"The great Roy Haynes," says Rollins, "one of the top drummers in jazz history, has been my buddy and friend for many years -- all the way back to the Hill [sugar Hill, in Harlem]. I am so lucky to have him this night at Carnegie Hall."

Christian McBride, 35, was brought to the project on a recommendation from Haynes, with whom he had toured and recorded on several occasions. "When a musician is highly praised by all of his fellows," Rollins says, "it means something. I am looking forward to having this opportunity to play with Christian."

On the International Stage

Less than a week after the Carnegie Hall concert -- on September 23 -- Sonny Rollins will perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which is celebrating its own 50th anniversary. Sonny appeared at the very first Monterey festival, in 1957.

Rollins, who (along with Steve Reich) received the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm last month and gave a concert while there, will be returning to Europe for a seven-city tour this fall. His itinerary for the remainder of 2007 includes the following concerts, in addition to Carnegie Hall and Monterey:

6/22 Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, BC; 6/24 Jazzfest International, Royal Theater, Victoria, BC; 7/14 Perugia (Italy) Jazz Festival; 7/27 Kiva Auditorium, Albuquerque, NM; 7/29 Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM; 8/11 Jazz in Marciac (France); 9/21 Schnitzer Auditorium, Portland, OR; 10/13 Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, Detroit; 11/16 Palau de la Musica, Barcelona; 11/19 Teatro de la Maestranza, Seville; 11/21 Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; 11/24 Barbican Theatre, London; 11/26 Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; 11/29 Opera Rainier, Monte Carlo; 12/1 Salle Pleyel, Paris.

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I'll probably go to this, but I have to say I wish they had somebody else on bass.

I'm not a fan of Christian McBride's recordings, but I've seen him live before and he's a fine straight ahead jazz bassist. I think he'll sound good with Sonny. Plus, he has alot of experience playing with Roy Haynes. They have good chemistry together.

Edited by sal
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I'll probably go to this, but I have to say I wish they had somebody else on bass.

:huh: You guys must be joking. I can see maybe not being into his fusion revival sort of thing he's doing now but there's no denying that he's a fantastic player. One of the greats, up there with Mr. PC, OP, and Ray Brown, imo.

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  • 2 months later...

Perhaps in another forum, but I thought I'd throw it in here as well:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/arts/mus...;pagewanted=all

Sonny Rollins Strips for Action

Sonny Rollins in the studio in 1957 and in performance in 2007. He will be performing with just bass and drums at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, just as he did there 50 years ago.

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: September 16, 2007

SONNY ROLLINS didn’t just influence other saxophone players. He produced a half-century of close listeners. The long, idiosyncratic tenor saxophone solos that he started developing around 50 years ago — bulging sacks of brilliant thematic improvisation, as well as slangy humor and quotations — became a genuine American rhetoric, delirious and ecstatic; audiences reoriented their imagination, and their sense of patience, around them. But his greatest work from the 1950s and ’60s trained many of them to want what he was later unwilling to give.

Some would like him to play small rooms every once in a while, so they could hear his tone better; or to perform into a standing microphone, without a clip-on microphone on his horn; or with no amplification at all. Some want him to play fewer calypsos. Some want him to banish the electric bass from his stage. Perhaps the most abject hope has been that he simplify things and play again the way he often did in the late ’50s and ’60s, with only a bassist and drummer. These fantasy-league visions have never stopped, and he has never paid them much attention.

So when Mr. Rollins, who turned 77 this month, announced this summer that he would play at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 18, and that for part of the concert he would play in a trio with the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Roy Haynes, all those who watch jazz closely stepped back and took a deep breath.

What’s so special about Sonny Rollins and trios?

When Mr. Rollins decided not to hire a pianist while making the record “Way Out West” in March 1957, jazz shifted a little bit, if mostly in his direction.

“What I got out of it,” he explained in an interview a few weeks ago, “was that, for better or for worse, I had an opportunity to play what was in my head. I was free.”

The veteran tenor saxophonist Lew Tabackin was in his late 20s and living in Philadelphia when he first heard Mr. Rollins play in a trio. “It had a huge impact,” he said. “It set the basis for what I was trying to do as a young man. I had the greatest jazz experiences I ever had while listening to Sonny in a trio.” He quickly tried it himself, and leads a saxophone trio today. “You try to become part of the drum set, become part of the bass,” he said.

Most of the tenor saxophonists who have followed Mr. Rollins in leading trios — that list would include Mr. Tabackin, Joe Henderson, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, David Murray and David S. Ware — have had to think long and hard about his example.

Though only a small portion of his discography uses the saxophone-bass-drums format, it encompasses some of his very best records, and some of the best records in all of jazz. After “Way Out West” Mr. Rollins kept at it. In early November 1957 he played at the Village Vanguard in New York with the bassist Wilbur Ware and the drummer Elvin Jones; some of the music was recorded and released as “A Night at the Village Vanguard.” In February 1958 he recorded “Freedom Suite” with Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach. He played lots of trio music after that until 1966, live mostly. Afterward he rarely returned to the form.

Among those great trio recordings was one that has gone largely unheard: the three songs Mr. Rollins played during his first performance at Carnegie Hall, on Nov. 29, 1957, with Wendell Marshall on bass and Kenny Dennis on drums. The show was recorded by Carnegie Hall as part of a multiple-artists benefit concert; the tapes from that night, discovered at the Library of Congress in 2004, have already yielded the superb CD “Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.”

Next week’s concert at Carnegie Hall will take place nearly 50 years after the 1957 show. If all goes according to plan, he will play the same songs he played in 1957, record the concert and subsequently release both the 1957 and 2007 performances on a single CD, through his own label, Doxy. So the CD will contain the same three loose frameworks for improvising — “Sonnymoon for Two,” “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Moritat (Mack the Knife)” — performed 50 years apart.

Mr. Rollins likes the symmetry of the idea, and the discovery of the old Carnegie Hall recording gave him a reason to revisit the trio format. (He admitted, though, that given his propensity for excessive self-criticism, he hasn’t been able to bring himself to listen to the 1957 tape just yet.) Outside of that he was not especially conscious of doing anything different then. As he put it, he was “always trying to experiment with some other ways of getting closer to my best performance expression.”

“Playing by myself, and hearing all the instruments in my head, was not something unknown to me or unusual to me,” he explained. “I had always been a person that liked to practice by myself. I found great comfort and enjoyment in it. I was able to play for hours and hours alone, and I used to go to secluded places to practice.” Those places included the Williamsburg Bridge walkway in New York City, and the long solitary sessions helped him develop himself as a long-form improviser capable of leading a band without another horn player.

“When I was playing with Miles Davis” — who first hired Mr. Rollins in the late ’40s — “I remember we used to do a thing we’d call stroll, where we’d have the piano lay out so that just drums and bass played with the horn player,” he continued. The absence of the piano, a naturally dominating instrument, let Mr. Rollins assume a much different role in the band.

“One horn player is almost compelled to follow the pianist,” he explained. “There are exceptions, but generally the pianist plays a more than equal role to the horn player.”

Branford Marsalis, who has played a lot of saxophone trio music, said he thinks Mr. Rollins’s best bands were trios or other pianoless groups. “It’s really hard to find piano players with imagination,” he said. “A lot of piano players tend to go home and practice, then play what they practice, which has a certain preordained feeling. A guy like Sonny — really more than anybody in jazz — can’t really be around that kind of stuff. He can’t be locked in a box. When you think about the way he plays, it’s completely logical that he would play in trio. He’s such a stream-of-consciousness player. So he gets to set the harmony, he can make the chords be whatever they want to at any given time.”

What made Mr. Rollins’s saxophone trio so special in 1957 wasn’t just the lack of a piano. (Gerry Mulligan had a quartet with no piano in 1951, but it made very meticulous music, with two horns, baritone saxophone and trumpet, creating contrapuntal harmony.) Nor was it the number three. (Nat King Cole’s group, with piano, guitar and bass, had been famous since 1940, and in the late ’40s Mr. Rollins himself used to lead a trio with piano and bass when he opened shows for Miles Davis.)

It was those particular instruments. Without a chordal instrument (piano or guitar) or any other front-line player, the saxophonist in charge has more elastic possibilities. The absence of chords, which bind and determine the harmony, let the saxophonist play a greater range of ideas without fear of clashing. And though by the late ’50s the tenor saxophone was already linked to a kind of American masculine charisma — there had been Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon, all playing the role of threshers in the long grass — the tenor saxophone trio encouraged a new level of solitary stamina in jazz: developing a narrative across long stretches of time, ultimately being heroic.

All of that requires an unusual amount of energy. Mr. Marsalis first tried trio playing in 1988, when the pianist in his quartet had his own record to promote. “I finished a solo,” he remembered, “and I realized, ‘O.K., what do we do now?’ ”

Then Bob Hurst, the bassist, took a solo, “and I figured, I never did like that formatted thing where everyone plays a solo on every song,” he continued. “So then I said, damn, I have to play longer. It hit me immediately that the second player is a foil. And when the foil is gone, it’s just you.”

Mr. Tabackin, interviewed a few weeks ago, was about to travel to Japan to play 15 gigs in 16 days with his trio. “It’s really physically demanding,” he said. (Mr. Tabackin is 10 years younger than Mr. Rollins.) “You have to cover a certain amount of space, almost physical space. It’s mainly the breathing thing that’s the problem. But if you play every night, it gets easier.” He paused. “I’m saying that now. In a few years I might have to change my mind.”

Mr. Rollins, typically, is philosophical on the subject. He acknowledges that there can be more space to fill during trio performances. But he maintains that it’s up to him to decide how much to fill it.

“Strange as it seems,” he said, “sometimes I’ve found it easier, less physical, to play with a trio. With other instruments, one would think, gee, I’ve got others to help support me, to take up some of the space, so I don’t have to play everything.

“But actually it works to the reverse. On the occasions when I’ve done the old favorite of drums and bass, I end up less physically fatigued and more exhilarated.”

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Here is someting upsetting for the cocert. When I arrived Carnegie Hall had just one window open to get your ticket from. I saw it with my own eyes.

"Thank all of you for attending our 50th Anniversary event. At the end

of our concert at Carnegie Hall last night, it came to our attention

that a significant number of ticket-buyers were forced to wait for

such a long time in order to pick up their tickets at will-call that

they missed most of the trio half of our concert.

This was very upsetting to me personally because my staff & I had

worked very hard to make sure that every detail of the evening was of

the highest quality & a satisfying experience for the people who

supported our efforts by buying tickets.

As part of our agreement with Carnegie Hall, everything related to

ticket sales was to be handled by the Carnegie box office. Obviously

something went very wrong, and we are anxious not only to discover

exactly what happened and why, but also how the ticket-buyers who

missed the trio segment will be compensated.

In the meantime, please accept my personal apologies.

Sonny Rollins"

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September 20, 2007

Music Review | Sonny Rollins

A Reunion of Giants, 50 Years On

By FRED KAPLAN

Sonny Rollins’s concert at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday

night was billed as the 50th anniversary of his first

performance there. More significant, it was the first

time since 1958 — nearly a 50th anniversary — that

he’s played with Roy Haynes. The greatest living tenor

saxophone player, teamed again with arguably the

greatest living drummer — now that’s historic.

The concert’s first half, when the two were joined by

the young bassist Christian McBride, lived up to the

fanfare, in unexpected ways. The high points of Mr.

Rollins’s concerts are usually the extended solos:

sinuous improvisations, going on for dozens of

choruses, no two alike, in which he explores every

chord, theme or counterpoint a song seems to offer,

then taps some uncharted crevice and digs or soars on

to blow more. This set wasn’t like that. Perhaps

because he was playing with peers (a rarity in recent

decades), he held back, simmered where he usually

boiled, and played as one of three equals.

The unlikely highlight was “Some Enchanted Evening,”

which Mr. Rollins opened by reciting the melody with

his lush and husky tone, while Mr. Haynes flapped

brushes in triple time, and Mr. McBride plucked whole

notes that anchored the chords without confining his

band mates. When they got to the part where most

musicians take solos, Mr. Rollins instead tossed out a

fragment of the melody, then Mr. Haynes filled in the

rest, and on the interplay went, bar after bar, the

two sometimes overlapping, sometimes not.

It felt like an ambling, elegant conversation between

old friends, which in fact it was. It set off a

goose-bump sensation, a shared intimacy one rarely

encounters in a jazz concert. And the full house gave

it the night’s lustiest applause.

For the set’s closer, “Mack the Knife,” Mr. Rollins

drew on a gruffer tone, full of fleet triplets and

arpeggios, but Mr. McBride took the star turn with a

solo that possessed a horn’s articulate fluency and a

master’s insouciant assurance, despite the age gap

that might have marked him as an apprentice. (He’s 35,

while Mr. Rollins is 77 and Mr. Haynes is —

unbelievably — 82.)

After intermission Mr. Rollins brought out his regular

sextet, which includes electric guitar, electric bass,

trombone, drums and congas (but, alas, no Mr. Haynes

or Mr. McBride). This is a band whose function is to

support the leader, and it performs that task

adequately. But Carnegie Hall’s acoustics, often

troublesome with amplified music, muddied the works,

and Mr. Rollins’s notes were often buried in the mix.

The engineers turned up the volume when Clifton

Anderson’s trombone started out too low, but didn’t

extend the courtesy to the headliner.

Mr. Rollins never broke through the stratosphere.

Still, he played with customary verve, especially

during the two calypsos, when he strutted to the front

of the stage, thrusting his horn to the rhythm while

ripping through the scales, finally uncorking a stream

of thunderous low notes like a foghorn guiding the

way. He does this at the end of nearly all his

concerts, and it never fails to delight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/arts/mus....html?ref=music

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Here is someting upsetting for the cocert. When I arrived Carnegie Hall had just one window open to get your ticket from. I saw it with my own eyes.

"Thank all of you for attending our 50th Anniversary event. At the end

of our concert at Carnegie Hall last night, it came to our attention

that a significant number of ticket-buyers were forced to wait for

such a long time in order to pick up their tickets at will-call that

they missed most of the trio half of our concert.

This was very upsetting to me personally because my staff & I had

worked very hard to make sure that every detail of the evening was of

the highest quality & a satisfying experience for the people who

supported our efforts by buying tickets.

As part of our agreement with Carnegie Hall, everything related to

ticket sales was to be handled by the Carnegie box office. Obviously

something went very wrong, and we are anxious not only to discover

exactly what happened and why, but also how the ticket-buyers who

missed the trio segment will be compensated.

In the meantime, please accept my personal apologies.

Sonny Rollins"

Welcome to New York!!!

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SONNY ROLLINS

rollins-cd.jpg

Fifty years ago, 22nd of September 1957, Sonny Rollins recorded the Blue Note record Newk's Time .

rollins-double.jpg

Last Thursday (The 18th of September 2007) he celebrated his 50th birthday of his first concert at the Carnegie Hall - New York. I'm sure there must be some readers who have been on both concerts? Or maybe at one of the two?

Enough reasons to celebrate these events today !!

50th birthday: Newk's Time

Keep swinging

Durium

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Saw Sonny here in Ptld, Or last night. No ticket snafus, good sound, nice if not brilliant band (particularly liked the hand drummer's groove). Sonny wasn't operating at genius level, but he at least got within sight of it fairly often. Typical good/frustrating late period Sonny. Probably better than the second set at carneigie, if not the first, now on to Monteray....And I paid a quarter to park on the street a block away, can't do that in New York I'm sure.

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I went to the Carnegie Hall concert and was really lucky to get in and even luckier to hear this performance. I arrived 20 minutes late without a ticket and was shocked to see this long line for the willcall window and was informed the show was sold out as well. I ran into someone I know who knew someone who worked there and we were whisked right in and taken upstairs just in time to hear the trio start. It was a beautiful set, laid back and sublime. The interaction between the members of the trio especially between Roy and Sonny was incredible. The second half wasn't bad either. I've discovered over the years that if the group is loud the best chance you have of hearing things clearly is to sit upstairs and this night was no exception. It was a brief set though which was a bit of a surprise. Sonny sounded great but he is a little weaker than he has been in the past (he is 77 of course) and his sound is not as big as it's been in recent years. Still he played beautifully and I was glad to have caught this. Everyone was there. I saw Yusef Lateef, Paul Jefferey, Jimmy Heath, and Henry Grimes and heard Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman were there among many others.

If I had to wait on that willcall line and missed most or all of the trio set, words can't describe how angry I'd be. I'd expect the folks at Carnegie Hall to pay Sonny to do it again but maybe at the Vanguard for a private show this time (this probably effected 100-200 people tops so one night, two sets should cover it)

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I went to the Carnegie Hall concert and was really lucky to get in and even luckier to hear this performance. I arrived 20 minutes late without a ticket and was shocked to see this long line for the willcall window and was informed the show was sold out as well. I ran into someone I know who knew someone who worked there and we were whisked right in and taken upstairs just in time to hear the trio start. It was a beautiful set, laid back and sublime. The interaction between the members of the trio especially between Roy and Sonny was incredible. The second half wasn't bad either. I've discovered over the years that if the group is loud the best chance you have of hearing things clearly is to sit upstairs and this night was no exception. It was a brief set though which was a bit of a surprise. Sonny sounded great but he is a little weaker than he has been in the past (he is 77 of course) and his sound is not as big as it's been in recent years. Still he played beautifully and I was glad to have caught this. Everyone was there. I saw Yusef Lateef, Paul Jefferey, Jimmy Heath, and Henry Grimes and heard Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman were there among many others.

If I had to wait on that willcall line and missed most or all of the trio set, words can't describe how angry I'd be. I'd expect the folks at Carnegie Hall to pay Sonny to do it again but maybe at the Vanguard for a private show this time (this probably effected 100-200 people tops so one night, two sets should cover it)

Add Lee Konitz, Kenny Garrett and one other whom I can't think of right now.

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If I had to wait on that willcall line and missed most or all of the trio set, words can't describe how angry I'd be. I'd expect the folks at Carnegie Hall to pay Sonny to do it again but maybe at the Vanguard for a private show this time (this probably effected 100-200 people tops so one night, two sets should cover it)

We can only wish.

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SONNY ROLLINS

rollins-cd.jpg

Fifty years ago, 22nd of September 1957, Sonny Rollins recorded the Blue Note record Newk's Time .

rollins-double.jpg

Last Thursday (The 18th of September 2007) he celebrated his 50th birthday of his first concert at the Carnegie Hall - New York. I'm sure there must be some readers who have been on both concerts? Or maybe at one of the two?

Enough reasons to celebrate these events today !!

50th birthday: Newk's Time

Keep swinging

Durium

I love to share with you some commends from Michael G. and some pictures of the reception prior to the concert.

Sonny Rolllins in Carnegie Hall

Keep swinging

Durium

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  • 2 weeks later...

The review (by Francis Davis) of the concert in this week's Village Voice:

OVERSHADOWING THE SHADOW

A Carnegie triumph for Mr. Rollins proves that the Sonnymoon is never over

by Francis Davis

An all-star audience turned out for Sonny Rollins's Carnegie Hall show September 18, this year's be-there-or-be-square jazz event. Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson sat two rows in front of me, and I also spotted Lee Konitz, Jimmy Heath, Lou Donaldson, and Yusef Lateef; friends report sighting Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano, and John Zorn. Because Rollins typically plays New York once annually, his local appearances take on the weight of deific visitations. As much anticipation awaits them as once awaited new releases by Coltrane or Miles, though for a different reason—what everybody's hoping for isn't a clue to where jazz is heading next, just insight into Sonny's state of mind.

Still, I don't recall there being quite this much fevered speculation since his 1985 solo concert at the Museum of Modern Art, where he made up for a hesitant 25-minute set with a euphoric 35-minute encore (when the tension gets to Rollins himself, the results can be bizarre). In previous years, he's often sought to increase ticket sales, or maybe just lessen the pressure on himself, by hosting another marquee name. But the only extra-added attraction this time out—and nobody could ask for better—was his own legend: the shadow of youthful greatness that's been striding onstage ahead of him and challenging him to keep step for half a century now, since Saxophone Colossus in 1956.

The standing ovation that greeted Rollins—who was flanked only by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride; no piano or guitar, no other horn, nothing that needed to be plugged in—may have been as much for that shadow as for the man himself, but not the standing ovation the trio received at the conclusion of its 50-minute set. Although the concert was billed as a 50th-anniversary celebration of Rollins's first Carnegie Hall appearance (at which he also led a piano-less trio as part of an all-star package featuring Thelonious Monk, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others), its real impetus was the chance discovery of tapes from that night's performances in an unmarked box at the Library of Congress three years ago. This was the find that yielded two sets by Monk with Coltrane, released by Blue Note to hosannas in 2005. We've yet to hear the rest, but in the same spirit with which he's been making vintage clips available on his website—and perhaps still mentally competing with Coltrane—this summer Rollins announced plans to release the three numbers he performed that night on his own label, side by side with new versions to be recorded with the same spartan instrumentation this year at Carnegie Hall, inviting us to contrast and compare.

Just the prospect of hearing Rollins once more forgoing a chording instrument, as he did on Way Out West, A Night at the Village Vanguard, and The Freedom Suite way back when, would have been enough, but this was history in the remaking. Needless to say, the show sold out weeks in advance.

So how was it? Before telling you why it had me walking on air (the first half, anyway—an opinion I trust I share with most of those in attendance), let me acknowledge some dissenting points of view. "Too much vibrato," Lee Konitz, who himself employs very little, told me when I bumped into him outside during intermission—a perfect example of why musicians don't really make good critics, since they tend to impose their own aesthetic on everyone else. Konitz, our greatest living saxophonist after Rollins and Ornette Coleman, said he was looking forward to the second set, featuring Rollins's working band and hopefully including some calypsos.

What's more, a dear friend of mine whom I envy for also having been at the '57 concert complained that McBride didn't swing. You should know, however, that this is someone who often talks as if she believes no one under the age of 70 does. And I often have to agree with her—but not about McBride, at 35 two full generations younger than either Rollins (77) or Haynes (82). McBride fulfilled every requirement of a bassist in this context, beginning with providing a solid harmonic anchor. Though fleet and virtuosic to the point of showing off, his solo on "Mack the Knife" kept the familiar melody clearly in mind and maintained Rollins's slashing tempo. Best of all, he sensed exactly when to defer to his elders in what gradually became a dialogue on the value of dynamics between the god of tenor saxophone and a god of drums.

A frequent complaint I heard in the days after was that Rollins never cut loose with chorus after chorus—that on the long, contemplative "Some Enchanted Evening," he didn't even take a solo as such, following a hesitant stab at one on the opening "Sonnymoon for Two," where he and Haynes were still feeling each other out. For me, the mock-aria from South Pacific—an unlikely vehicle for anyone but Rollins—was the evening's glory. He and Haynes didn't exactly trade fours on it for 10 minutes running, and they didn't exactly not; their exchanges followed the rules of conversation, not metrics. Analytical rather than discursive or ecstatic, Rollins treated the melody to an endless series of variations, slowing down his vibrato and dropping into a subtone to summon up the ghosts of both Enzio Pinza and Coleman Hawkins, all the while moving in and out of tempo within phrases shaped to Haynes's elegant brushstrokes. Even those who might have wished for conventional improvised choruses had to agree that it was magic. So was "Mack the Knife," highlighted by McBride's solo and crafty fours between Rollins and Haynes practically from beginning to end.

The second half, with Rollins supported by trombone, guitar, electric bass, drums, and congas on a pair of cheery riffs and a closing calypso, figured to be anticlimactic, and it was. Konitz, I'm told, was gone before the calypso, which was probably just as well—he'd have objected to the interminable drum solo on top of an interminable conga solo, and he'd have been right. The contrast between the two sets revealed itself visually: In the nightcap, Rollins literally fronted a rhythm section, whereas if he'd moved any closer to the drums during the opener, he'd have been able to scoop Haynes's beats into the bell of his horn.

Not that Haynes made all the difference. Rollins is a song man: Even when he briefly embraced free-form in the early '60s, hiring Don Cherry and Billy Higgins away from Ornette Coleman, he continued to use the occasional Broadway number as his launch. He may be able to forgo a chording instrument, but not chords. Blues and calypsos may give him plenty to work with rhythmically. But when Rollins is on, rhythm takes care of itself through the combination of his island heritage and a sense of comic timing worthy of Jack Benny.

Not that Haynes didn't also benefit from the encounter. Generally recognized as our greatest living drummer now that Max Roach is gone, he's lately become overbearing when leading his own groups. Matching wits with Rollins, though, he regained the subtlety that earned him his reputation in the first place. (As an aside, Concord has just reissued 1957's The Sound of Sonny, one of Rollins's few recorded meetings with Haynes. Canonical only insofar as everything by Rollins from that period is, it's nevertheless delightful, no less thanks to Sonny Clark—if every pianist comped as sparely yet decisively as he does here, no saxophonist would ever dream of going piano-less.)

What we've long wished for from Rollins is greater intimacy, if not in terms of smaller venues (no way he's going back to playing clubs), then in terms of trimmer ensembles. We've wanted to hear him mix it up with players of equal stature (Haynes comes close) and top-notch relative newcomers like McBride. Most of all, we've wanted surprise—not necessarily for him to break with jazz convention (if this were Ornette Coleman, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson would have been onstage), just for him to break his own established routines. For 50 minutes at Carnegie, he came close to giving us all of this. The shame is that a good part of the crowd missed some of it, kept waiting in line for close to half an hour at a single will-call window—poor planning on someone's part. Rollins issued an apology on his website the morning after, but even factoring in the second set, he has nothing else to apologize for. It was some enchanted evening, all right.

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