Casa Valdez Studios (Free subscription) | yesterday
DCV: You seem to have had a wide range influences over the years, some that I hear are Ornette, Trane, Garzone, Getz, Warne Marsh, and Sonny Rollins. How have you thought about th e effect these players have had on your playing? I mean have you consciously tried to integrate their styles into your own music, or do you strive not to sound too much like them? Do you see what I'm getting at? In my own...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 04/09/2008
The Duke Ellington Jazz Festival Presents: Monty Alexander Blues Alley Washington, DC October 5, 2008 8pm and 10pm...
Miami Herald (Free subscription) | 04/09/2008
For the first time since he founded the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein didn't have to sign any checks or worry about how the fickle weather might affect the bottom line. Instead, his biggest concern at the recent festival was whether he could keep up on piano with his Newport All-Stars band during their set on the main stage that preceded performances by Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins.
Music News (Free subscription) | 04/09/2008
AP - For the first time since he founded the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein didn’t have to sign any checks or worry about how the fickle weather might affect the bottom line. Instead, his biggest concern at the recent festival was whether he could keep up on piano with his Newport All-Stars band during [...]
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 04/09/2008
Sonny Rollins, aka the Saxophone Colossus, turns 78 on Sunday, September 7. His website, sonnyrollins.com, is hosting a multimedia celebration that focuses on his fans, his web visitors, his greatest inspiration, Coleman Hawkins, and his extraordinary new recording, Road Shows, Vol. 1. Content available for viewing or download includes an animated transcription of The Everywhere Calypso, The Sonny...
Detroit Free Press (Free subscription) | 01/09/2008
If any more evidence was needed that the Detroit International Jazz Festival has elevated its product in the last two years, the gloriously stuffed schedule of overlapping talent on Sunday was it. The laws of metaphysics made it impossible to hear it all, and no sane person would even try to ingest as much as I did. Of course, jazz critics have never been known for their mental stability.
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 30/08/2008
Jazz critic and radio host Neil Tesser has written an account of Sonny Rollins' mid-1950s sojourn in Chicago, during which the tenor saxophonist overcame his addiction to heroin and eventually rejoined the jazz scene...
Chicago Tribune (Free subscription) | 30/08/2008
Still majestic in tone and generous in spirit, saxophonist Sonny Rollins gave the 30th annual Chicago Jazz Festival precisely what it needed and deserved: a regal opening night.
Casa Valdez Studios (Free subscription) | 28/08/2008
Faithful reader James Seaberry sent me a link to this great article in the Chicago reader about Sonny Rollins' battle with heroin. In his six-decade career, legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins has claimed many a triumph. But his greatest may have come during a quiet period in Chicago.- By Neil Tesser (Chicago Reader) A decade ago, on September 9, 1998, the YMCA building at 3763 S. Wabash became an...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 28/08/2008
Get lost in jazz master Sonny Rollins' sweet saxophonic stylings tonight at Millennium Park. The self-proclaimed "Saxophone Colossus" will bust out the ditties that landed him a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award - among other accolades - and propelled him to the ranks of his most noteworthy contemporaries, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Chicagoist (Free subscription) | 28/08/2008
Get lost in jazz master Sonny Rollins ' sweet saxophonic stylings tonight at Millennium Park. The self-proclaimed "Saxophone Colossus" will bust out the ditties that landed him a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award – among other accolades – and propelled him to the ranks of his most noteworthy contemporaries, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The performance...
Detroit Free Press (Free subscription) | 28/08/2008
NEW YORK -- Kenny Garrett opens his club sets with the intensity of a rocket launch. On a recent night at Sweet Basil, a Greenwich Village jazz shrine, Garrett's quartet explodes out of the box at a brush-fire tempo, the leader's alto saxophone caterwauling atop thrashing drums and bass.
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 28/08/2008
Grant Park; Thu 28-Sun 31 When jazz fans scan this year's lineup, two names will jump off the page: Sonny and Ornette. Sonny Rollins (Pritzker Pavilion), who kicks off the fest Thursday night, may be the exemplar of bebop's thorny relationship to its past. At 78, Rollins remains a mercurial and thrilling live performer, refusing to fit his unpredictable solos into the neat box jazz historians have...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Free subscription) | 27/08/2008
Vince Gill, and others, join Little Feat on a CD tribute ... Renee Fleming and former Pink Floyd members are honored ... and more.
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 26/08/2008
Grammy nominee and one of the world's premier Latin jazz bands Sammy Figueroa and his Latin Jazz Explosion appearing at Berkeley's La Pea Cultural Center Long known as one of the world's great players, percussionist Sammy Figueroa has performed and recorded with artists such as Miles Davis, the Brecker Brothers, Mariah Carey, Chaka Khan, and John McLaughlan...
