Sonny Rollins, saxophonist and restless genius of jazz, dead at 95
- On Monday, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, known as the Saxophone Colossus, died at his Woodstock, New York home at age 95. Spokesperson Terri Hinte cited no specific cause but noted he had been largely housebound in recent years due to various physical problems.
- Pulmonary fibrosis forced Rollins into retirement after his final concert in 2012, though he had taken multiple lengthy hiatuses throughout his career, including a six-year sabbatical to practice meditation and Eastern spiritual disciplines after discovering Zen Buddhism in Japan.
- Rollins was acknowledged as a jazz voice as groundbreaking as John Coltrane, with whom he locked horns on 'Tenor Madness' in 1956; his 1956 album 'Saxophone Colossus' contained the blues improvisation 'Blue 7,' hailed by critics Gunther Schuller and Martin Williams as a jazz high water mark.
- Over a career stretching to the late 1940s, Rollins received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors, and National Medal of Arts. Survivors include nephew Clifton Anderson and nieces Vallyn Anderson and Gabrielle DeGroat.
- Rollins told NPR his best work came when "playing completely spontaneous," rejecting what he called "the corporate culture" anathema to jazz, emphasizing instead "creation, freedom, thinking things out in the moment, like life is. A different sunset every night, that's what jazz is about.
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257 Articles
New York, USA. Sonny Rollins, the “colossus of the saxophone” whose energetic and contemplative works made him the last representative of a golden era of jazz, died Monday at age 95. “With great regret and deep affection we announced Sonny Rollins’ death,” at his home in Woodstock, New York, said a publication on the artist's official networks. American Rollins found the means in jazz to make a social and spiritual comment, expressing with his s…
Sonny Rollins is dead. The death of a single man weighs infinitely more than all the rotten lives of all the rotten politicians in this country.
Remembering the remarkable life of jazz legend Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins, one of jazz's all-time greats, died Monday at the age of 95 after spending more than five decades pushing the boundaries of the genre. Rollins won two Grammys and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in the early 2000s. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has a look at his career.
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