The Quarterback
As part of the Chicago Jazz Fest, both Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman are playing this week for the cost of a couple of CTA train rides.
Sonny Rollins is the deepest tenor saxophonist to come out from under Thelonius Monk's broad wings. And from what I hear, the 78 year old blower still has the wind. If you're not familiar but want to be, I suggest you pick up Next Album which was a come back record for him in 1972 after an apparently self-imposed six year exile from the music business.
Ornette Coleman is, of course, a founder of the Free Jazz movement. His career spans decades but if you're not familiar with Coleman, I suggest you look back no further than his 2007 Pulitzer winning live album Sound Grammar.
I got my free Free Jazz kick started early Monday night - went to see Mike Reed's People Places & Things down at Millennium Park. They had with them some players from back in the day including a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra from their early ground breaking days in Chicago.
And this is where I stop writing and ask you to read this article about Mike Reed, a great musician and a huge contributor to the over all good of the Chicago music scene (this jazz drummer is oddly enough the man behind the Pitchfork Music Festival).
Sonny Rollins is the deepest tenor saxophonist to come out from under Thelonius Monk's broad wings. And from what I hear, the 78 year old blower still has the wind. If you're not familiar but want to be, I suggest you pick up Next Album which was a come back record for him in 1972 after an apparently self-imposed six year exile from the music business.
Ornette Coleman is, of course, a founder of the Free Jazz movement. His career spans decades but if you're not familiar with Coleman, I suggest you look back no further than his 2007 Pulitzer winning live album Sound Grammar.
I got my free Free Jazz kick started early Monday night - went to see Mike Reed's People Places & Things down at Millennium Park. They had with them some players from back in the day including a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra from their early ground breaking days in Chicago.
And this is where I stop writing and ask you to read this article about Mike Reed, a great musician and a huge contributor to the over all good of the Chicago music scene (this jazz drummer is oddly enough the man behind the Pitchfork Music Festival).
4 Comments:
This reminds me of the day I was watching the news during the 9-11 nightmare and the new was doing a story on people taking the subway out of Manhattan. As they were talking to folks it became apparent that the little black man with the instrumental case was none other than Rollins. He looked so small and scared just like every other displaced New Yorker on that train. That moment summed up the scope of that day to me in a way.
I wonder if he was playing on one of the bridges to Brooklyn. He was known to do that.
I saw Sonny Rollins play a show in Central Park several years ago and wasn't too impressed. Any edge he had is gone and he was sorta going through the motions. I got bored after half an hour and left. While walking away, some guy stopped me and asked what the music was down the street. When I told him, his eyes got really big and said, "Sonny Rollins is playing? Wow." Maybe he ended up enjoying it more than I did.
Actually I'm glad you brought that up Justin because fair warning to anybody looking into Rollins, he really doesn't have any edge. He's Standard Jazz throwing in some latin beats and he's really kind of lite. But he is a forceful big lunged fellow and I don't know, if you're like me you hear Free Jazz all the time. It's the new standard. So sometimes it's nice to go back to Rollins.
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