Sonny Rollins, Barbican | reviews, news & interviews
Sonny Rollins, Barbican
Sonny Rollins, Barbican
More than two hours of magic from US sax colossus
Sunday, 21 November 2010
"Being asked to introduce this artist”, began the compere, “is like being asked to introduce God." Fans of Eric Clapton, of course, might beg to differ. But in jazz terms, Sonny Rollins, self-proclaimed “saxophone colossus”, has indisputably been on the all-time A-list since his early work with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. He is also on a particularly exclusive part of that list of jazz greats: those still alive. Yet even amongst those few, whose resilient ranks include both Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, Rollins’s London Jazz Festival performance represented a quite remarkable feat of stamina.
When he shuffled onto the stage, sporting shades and a baggy, billowing red shirt reaching almost to his knees, the tenor player was apparently expected to play for around 70 minutes. Even that seemed impressive enough given that the accompanying line-up of guitar, electric bass, drums and congas left the soloing focus firmly on Rollins. Yet that finish point passed unacknowledged.
'By the time he finally stopped, two-and-a-quarter hours had elapsed (I swear the guitarist checked his watch at two hours 10). Sonny Rollins is 80 years old'
Just beyond the 100-minute mark, he went into a mammoth solo coda that surely signalled the show’s climax, and the audience – half of which had delivered a standing ovation before Rollins even played a note – went bananas. But Rollins returned to his mouthpiece. Two hours in, Rollins took to the mic for the first time to deliver a lengthy, rasping monologue that took in homespun philosophy, hip hop and the history of the London jazz scene. And once again returned to his mouthpiece. By the time he finally stopped, two-and-a-quarter hours had elapsed (I swear the guitarist checked his watch at two hours 10). Sonny Rollins is 80 years old.
Many would be happy merely to have witnessed such a marathon performance from a man of Rollins’s reputation, yet what was most impressive was that his chops remained in such fine fettle. True, it was all fairly safe; unlike a contemporary appearance by Taylor, for instance, the night passed without a single challenging note. But then Rollins never set out to be the iconoclast. Instead, he has been and remains an effortlessly melodic soloist, one who is still – despite the white hair and hunched posture – sufficiently mischievous to quote, on occasion, from other well-known melodies.
The band, navigating Latin and calypso rhythms as well as swing, was consummate but on the whole somewhat bland (though bassist Bob Cranshaw stood out for all the wrong reasons, with a thin, metallic bass tone otherwise unheard since a bass guitar instructional video circa 1993). The major exception was Kobie Watkins on drums, who topped off a stellar performance with a phenomenally assured, nuanced and genuinely musical solo. Yet it was without a doubt Mr Rollins’s night – and the standing ovation at the end seemed genuinely to be not only for the sheer weight of history, but also for the concert we'd just witnessed.
- Find Sonny Rollins on Amazon
- London Jazz Festival finishes today
Share this article
Add comment
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more New music
Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping the past to embrace the future
Northern Irish troubadour pushes forward
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
Intimate songs of unavoidable sorrow
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopper
Eighties/Nineties indie-tronic dance mavericks take the roof off
Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs
Deserved tribute to the Los Angeles new wave popsters who failed to click
Album: Ani DiFranco - Unprecedented Sh!t
Tough, uncompromising, unflinching
Album: Abigail Lapell - Anniversary
An engaging - if doleful - set from the Canadian folk-Americana singer
Album: Kings Of Leon - Can We Please Have Fun
The good ole boys of stadium indie go back to basics: will it work?
Album: Bab L'Bluz - Swaken
Fiery psychedelia to lift your soul coming straight out of the Maghreb
Album: Pokey LaFarge - Rhumba Country
A pig in a pokey, as the singer farms in Maine and reads the Bible, with technicolor results
Album: Josienne Clarke - Parenthesis, I
Redefining the self, from the most absorbing of British singer-songwriters
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love In The World
Top-drawer British harmony pop band whose promise was unfulfilled
CVC, Concorde 2, Brighton review - they have the songs and they have the presence
Welsh sextet bring their lively Seventies-flavoured pop frollicking to the south coast
Comments
...