Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins Opens 24th Festival
Sonny Rollins was
recently named Jazz Artist and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year in the 54th
Annual DownBeat Critics Poll. At this point
in the jazz legend’s career, after being named an NEA Jazz Master
and receiving accolades from every corner of the globe, awards
almost seem beside the point. For Rollins, who opens the 24th San
Francisco Jazz Festival on October 20 at the Masonic Center, it
continues to be about the music.
Rollins began his musical
career on the piano in his native Harlem, but soon switched to
alto saxophone before settling on the tenor as his instrument of choice.
His immersion in the flourishing New York jazz scene was a formative influence
for the young Rollins. “It was a perfect environment for
someone who wanted to be a musician,” he said in an interview at the
International Association of Jazz Educators conference in January. “I
was blessed to have been born there. All my idols lived nearby.” Those
idols soon took notice of the teenager’s prodigious skills—he
recorded with both J. J. Johnson and Bud Powell while still in
his teens, and worked with both Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk
in his early twenties.
A stellar string of
mid-’50s albums, including the renowned “Saxophone Colossus ,” (which spawned one of his well-known nicknames; the other,
Newk, came from Rollins’ physical resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers
pitcher Don Newcombe), cemented Rollins’ place in the jazz firmament.
Soon he was experimenting with a piano-less trio of just bass, drums, and
saxophone on groundbreaking late ’50s albums like Way Out West and Live
at the Village Vanguard.
To this day, his live
performances continue to be rapturous affairs, earning accolades
from Rollins’ many
admirers. The Boston Globe raves
that “Any concert by Rollins’ stands as living history.” Critic
Gary Giddins states that “Rollins looms as an invincible presence…one
of the most cunning, surprising, and original of jazz visionaries.” And
Stanley Crouch, in The New Yorker, noted that Rollins “seems
immense, summoning the entire history of jazz, capable of blowing
a hole through a wall.” His latest album, Sonny, Please,
is a testament to his compositional and improvisational vitality,
and the persistent singularity of vision that defines Sonny Rollins
storied career.
Festival kicks into gear with blues legends, fresh faces, and wicked grooves
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| James
Cotton and Hubert Sumlin |
Here are
four more exciting shows coming up in October:
Just one night after the Festival kick-off concert featuring Sonny Rollins
(10/20), blues harmonica legend James Cotton will
fire up the Herbst Theatre with his longtime Memphis pal, guitarist Hubert
Sumlin (10/21). Both Blues Hall of Famers played key roles in defining
the Chicago blues sound—Cotton as sideman for Muddy Waters and Sumlin as lead guitarist
for Howlin’ Wolf—a legacy they continue to enrich today with
their stellar live performances.
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| Meshell
Ndegeocello |
The following night promises to be every bit as groove-centric, as bassist
and singer-songwriter extraordinaire Meshell Ndegeocello brings
her band to the Regency Ballroom (10/22). Ndegeocello has a track
record of bucking expectations, but her latest album, The Spirit Music Jamia:
Dance of the Infidel, is her most groundbreaking yet. All About
Jazz called the eclectic, mostly instrumental mélange of funk
and jazz “an explicit move in a new direction for Ndegeocello, who
reveals greater breadth and depth with each passing year.”
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| Cyrus
Chestnut and Russell Malone |
For two men who rarely work together, pianist Cyrus Chestnut
and guitarist Russell
Malone (10/27) share a
close musical affinity. Both are exceptional instrumentalists
with a penchant for modernizing jazz repertoire with contemporary
pop tunes. The two finally came together when Malone contributed
three solos to Chestnut’s 2006 album Genuine
Chestnut. This live pairing of the two co-leading a quartet is
a Festival exclusive.
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| Arturo
Sandoval |
As astonishing
a showman as he is an instrumentalist, Arturo
Sandoval (10/28) has earned the glowing praise of both his mentor Dizzy Gillespie (“He’s
one of the best…he’s got bull chops!”) and the international
press (the UK Guardian called him “arguably the most prodigious
trumpeter of his generation”). A paragon of versatility, Sandoval’s
four Grammys have come for his diverse work with Cuban supergroup
Irakere, his albums as a bandleader, and the score of For Love or Country,
the biopic of his live.
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| Levi's
Plaza Noontime concerts |
Wednesday,
Oct 4, 12-1:30PM
Levi's Plaza | San Francisco |
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| Tanaora |
Describing
their style as “contemporary music
of the Americas,” the quartet Tanaora
features a delightful fusion of Brazilian
and Caribbean music with American jazz. |
 Complete
Summerfest Schedule
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Alice
Coltrane (11/4)received two exciting press write-ups
this past week in advance of her concert at the San
Francisco Jazz Festival, commemorating the 80th anniversary
of her late husband John Coltrane's birthday.
A San
Francisco Chronicle piece noted “there's little
that even remotely comes close to the music [John
Coltrane] made with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison
-- unless you count the duo of Trane's wife Alice
and son Ravi, who, in their homegrown context, channel Coltrane's
widely imitated never-duplicated sound, ideas
and depth of feeling in ways more eerie, throat-catching and majestic
than one would have ever thought humanly possible.”
The Detroit
Free Press profiled
Coltrane in advance of her performance at
Ann Arbor's University Music Society on September
23.
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This week we’ve got one more
newly released
double-CD
set of Keith Jarrett’s Carnegie Hall performance
available for the third person to
correctly answer this week’s trivia question:
What famous late-night TV show did Keith Jarrett perform on in the late ’70s following the runaway success of his seminal The
Köln Concert?
 E-mail
Your Answer (include "Late Night"
in the subject line)
The
fine print: Our contest winner
will be notified directly by email, and
both the winner's name and the correct answer
to the question will be published in next
week's e-News. The following are not eligible
to enter: employees and current contractors
of SFJAZZ and its seasonal sponsors; past
e-News Jazz Trivia Contest winners; ECM Records
employees.
Last
week's winner:
Congratulations to last week’s
winner Zach Zakharian, who correctly named
Charles
Lloyd’s Forest
Flower: Live in Monterey as the 1966 album featuring a young
Keith Jarrett on piano. |
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