Sonny Rollins in Chicago

[ejp626]

I do want to apologize if I've offended anyone who played with (or knows of anyone who played with) Sonny Rollins over the past twenty years or so, but it isn't a real secret that he has not put together great touring groups. The focus has generally been on his soloing, and that's ok. But in the past few years I've seen him he has turned over more space to his group and they often weren't up to the challenge.

Anyway, I just saw him perform last night and this was the group:

SONNY ROLLINS, Tenor Saxophone

CLIFTON ANDERSON, Trombone

BOB CRANSHAW, Bass

STEVE JORDAN, Drums

KIMATI DINIZULU, Percussion

BOBBY BROOM, Guitar

The interplay between Rollins and Anderson was pretty good; I suspect they are the core group and Broom was just brought in for the Chicago performance. (I could be wrong of course.)

It was a good but not spectacular show. I was really bored by the drum solo. The percussionist was better. I didn't think a 20-minute calpyso piece was stunning in and of itself, since the variations Sonny played weren't really that challenging. I certainly didn't make an ass of myself and jump to my feet like half the crowd did after it finally ended. It was a good piece but not riveting by any means. I thought it was more interesting that he had a 5 minute solo section -- with everybody else completely silent -- and it didn't suck, like the Solo album sucks. I also thought his last song -- Italian Melody -- went on way too long. I've seen him play better and worse. But it was an entertaining evening nonetheless. They played two hours straight without an intermission, and of course it was another chance to see one of the greats.

I think it is a good sign that he is playing with stronger musicians and maybe he will be recording again soon. On the other hand his voice sounded terrible and weak; hopefully it was just a cold and nothing more serious.

Just as a side note, they've announced the CSO jazz line-up for next year, and it sure looks weak to me. The last two years have been quite good, but this just isn't in the same league. (I guess that's good for me, since I won't feel like I am missing out while over in England...)

[Dan Gould]

I always thought that much of the criticism levelled at Rollins' bands has been levelled at Clifton Anderson and Cranshaw (for playing electric bass)? I can understand that Broom might help, but from what I've read, that still looks a lot like his typical touring band, except no Stephen Scott (pretty sure he's been the pianist lately).

[JSngry]

Broom's been w/Sonny on and off for about the last 20 or so years, at least for recording dates.

[marcello]

That's the same band that plyed here last year, but without Broom. Sonny was great.

I could have done without the percussionist, though.

They are scheduled to be here for the Rochester Festival in June and I already bought tickets.

[Adam]

Same band, and similar sounding show, as at Disney Hall in Los Angeles last month.

[sal]

I couldn't attend the show, and now I am kicking myself. I've been hearing all over town that this was one of Sonny's best performances in quite some time. My friend's co-worker said that of the 7 or 8 times he's seen Sonny Rollins since the sixties, this one was the best. Here's an article from Tribune critic Howard Reich:

Jazz giant Sonny Rollins runs roughshod over cliches

By Howard Reich

Tribune arts critic

For a jazz icon such as tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, it cannot be easy to compete against your own legend.

How does the man who recorded "Saxophone Colossus" and "The Bridge," the musician who practically personifies the jazz life — in all it glories and travails — possibly withstand comparisons to his earlier triumphs?

How does he walk onstage and once again play Sonny Rollins as the world expects to him to be played, instantly producing the heroic solos and brilliant technical feats that his name has come to signify?

In some previous performances, Rollins essentially has gone through the motions, giving listeners the thunderous crescendos and buoyant calypso beats that they remember from his recordings, right on cue, almost by rote.

But the intermissionless, two-hour marathon Rollins played over the weekend in Orchestra Hall was different, as spontaneous and mercurial a set as he has given Chicago in years. Switching restlessly from tenderness to tempestuousness, from serene melody to far-out dissonance, from the skittering bebop rhythms of his youth to the high-flown soliloquies that remain his stock in trade, Rollins erased lingering doubts about the enduring vibrancy of his art. For at nearly 75, he reminded listeners that he still can skirt expectations, that he still can be more than a mere impersonation of himself.

Though every set-piece he and his sextet played Friday night held fascinating turns of musical thought, his most startling work unfolded in a vast transformation of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." Listeners who have followed Rollins' career through the decades already know that he has found entire worlds of sound in familiar, traditional popular songs. But his monumental reassessment of the gorgeous ballad practically turned into a recital unto itself. From the song's opening notes, Rollins summed up the essentials of his style: the down-home blues sensibility, the grainy and gloriously unvarnished tone, the rasps and growls and cries that recast a classic tune in deeply autobiographical terms. Floating lyrically above the beat one moment, hitting swing rhythms hard the next, Rollins' first volleys on "A Nightingale Sang" tapped a lifetime of hard-won knowledge and hard-earned technique. Then he really started to work.

Signaling the rest of the band to stop playing, Rollins ventured into a head-tripping, genre-defying, stream-of-consciousness cadenza that freely bounded among styles and idioms and vernaculars. Throaty low notes, surging rhythms, long and winding phrases, telegraphic little riffs, shards of melody and bursts of dissonance — the man nimbly unfurled it all, proving that he still can think as fast as he can play. Suddenly "A Nightingale Sang" re-emerged as "Time After Time," then tipped its hat to "Chicago" and "My Kind of Town" before wending its way back to a motif that Rollins had articulated a few minutes earlier. Yet this outpouring of tone and idea, this illuminating insight into the way Rollins conceives sound, cohered as a bona fide solo. Hungrier to play than this listener has heard him in a long time, Rollins relentlessly interrupted — or, to put it more politely, assisted — solos by his sidemen. The lithe and silken lines that the inspired Chicago guitarist Bobby Broom played throughout the evening would have been appealing in their own right, but they became that much more interesting when answered by Rollins' muscular provocations. Similarly, the statements of trombonist Clifton Anderson, electric bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Steve Jordan and percussionist Kimati Dinizulu often received a shot of adrenaline from the maestro. Though a little less amplification would have helped listeners savor the grit and expressive power of Rollins' timbre, there was no denying the vigor of this performance, a tour de force by any standard — even Rollins'.

[AllenLowe]

wel, if Howard Reich liked it, it can't be any good - that guy's a fool -

[johnlitweiler]

See the web site http://www.suntimes.com/output/jazz/cst-ftr-sonny25.html -- as usual, the Chicago Sun-Times gets it right while the Tribune doesn't get it.

[JSngry]

You dog!