March 5, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

Tenor sax “colossus” Sonny Rollins
to play at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Sonny Rollins
• Saxophonist Rollins is regarded by many as the world’s greatest living improviser
• One of the creators of the hard bop sound in the 1950s
• His latest release is This Is What I Do
• Wednesday, April 17 / 8 pm
• UCSB Campbell Hall
• General: $40/$35, UCSB students: $19/$16
• Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

One of the giants of jazz, saxophonist Sonny Rollins, will perform on Wednesday, April 17 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. From his earliest days as a professional musician playing alongside Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, to the 1950s when he and John Coltrane defined the hard-bop tenor sound, from his legendary sabbatical that led to his breakthrough The Bridge up to his most current release, This Is What I Do, Rollins has been the consummate jazz saxophonist. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice calls Rollins “jazz’s greatest living improviser,” stating that “his fluid, muscular, sardonically confident sound justifies his omnivorous appetites and vitalizes his twistiest abstractions.”

Born Theodore Walter Rollins on September 7, 1930 in New York City, Sonny grew up in Harlem around the corner from his idol Coleman Hawkins. In fact, he started out playing alto saxophone and adoring the music of Louis Jordan, but at the age of sixteen he insisted his mother buy him a tenor when Hawkins became his favorite. As a teenager, he fell under the spell of a musical revolution called bebop and came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his mentor. Rollins recorded with Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.

Rollins took the first of his numerous sabbaticals in the mid-1950s, setting up what would become his early career pattern of intensely creative bursts followed by time out of the public eye devoted to practice, contemplation and musical and spiritual study. This initial break was his most desperate, as he used it to kick a dangerous drug habit, but he returned to action to be part of the groundbreaking Clifford Brown/Max Roach quintet. (Sadly Brown died soon after in a car crash.) Still, Rollins emerged as a group leader and recorded classic albums, including Saxophone Colossus, The Freedom Suite, Newk’s Time (his nickname Newk comes from his resemblance to former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe) and Live at the Village Vanguard. He also established his own writing credentials by penning compositions that have become jazz standards like “St. Thomas” (the first of his many forays into calypso, inspired by his Virgin Islander mother), “Blue Seven” and later in his career, “Oleo.”

He took his most famous break from 1959-1961, disappearing from view until he was found practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York, one of the few places where he could hone his craft without being observed or disturbing his neighbors. He returned to action to be part of the flowering of more adventurous jazz of the 1960s with the releases of The Bridge, Our Man in Jazz and East Broadway Rundown and landmark live performances that cemented his reputation as a prodigious improviser. In the late ‘60s he again retreated from performing and recording, until he was discovered in an ashram in India where he had gone for enlightenment. He ended that six-year period with the simply titled Next Album in 1972.

Since that time Rollins has worked relatively steadily, releasing a series of albums for the Milestone label, which celebrated his 25 years with them on the two-disc retrospective Silver City in 1996. In the liner notes to Silver City jazz journalist Chip Stern writes that Rollins’ “solo concept and his sound have deepened and evolved as the tenor saxophonist pursued an ensemble style of jazz rooted in his hard bop and post-modern breakthroughs of the Fifties and Sixties (leavened by an abiding love for swing tenor and the riffing blues), the American popular song, traditional and contemporary R&B, and those strains of folk music which share a devotion to dance, drums and the human voice.”

The 2000 release of This Is What I Do further attests to Rollins’ powers. As he has before, he mines cinema’s musical past to find tunes no one else would think of reviving. His sweetly expressive versions of “Sweet Leilani” (from Waikiki Wedding) and “The Moon of Manakoora” (from The Hurricane) cleverly counterpoint with his bluesier tributes to fellow jazzmen on “Charles M.” and “Did You See Harold Vick?” Rollins is ever-searching, for as he has said about his playing, “You see, this is my dilemma. I’m a guy who makes things up as I go along so nothing is ever going to be finished—there are so many layers...And that’s how I feel about improvising—there’s always another level to go to.”

This performance by Sonny Rollins is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KCLU Public Radio. It is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Tickets are $40 and $35 for the general public and $19 and $16 for UCSB students.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.