Towards the end of Thursday’s enthralling performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall, saxophone legend Sonny Rollins told the audience in that great throaty voice of his: “Life is not about doing, it’s about trying.”
This particular jazz giant may be shuffling towards his own personal finale, but to this listener there’s still a lot more doin’ than tryin’.
Rollins is the last of his breed, a man whose nickname is taken from his most accomplished work, the landmark 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus. A tenor saxophonist whose 60-year career has included collaborations with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, but whose personal struggles with demons including heroin and a sense of his own musical limitations – which prompted several long sabbaticals – stopped his career from ever reaching the heights attained by that acclaimed threesome.
These days those demons are long gone and in their place is a relaxed, lion-in-winter quality to the old fellow. Appearing on stage in a billowing white shirt with a shock of grey hair and the kind of shades that can be had for two bucks on Venice boardwalk, Rollins spent his 90-minute set with a confident but controlled exploration of melody and tempo from just a handful of songs.
Opening up with Patanjali, something of concert staple these days, Rollins played the part of wry master of ceremonies, weaving in and out of the main theme while Sammy Figueroa’s insistent work on the congas and the rhythm section of Kobie Watkins and Bob Cranshaw unfolded behind him.
Two songs later Rollins eased into the plaintive opening bars of Blue Gardenia, a twelve-minute exploration of nostalgia and melancholy, a vibe that was continued with the Rollins favorites Nice Lady and They Say It’s Wonderful.
Things livened up with the set’s penultimate piece, Nishi, giving Rollins the chance to show he’s still got some funk left in him, lubricating his pipes with the track’s centerpiece slinky solo while Cranshaw pumped out a knuckle-popping baseline. Before we knew it were at the coda, the ever popular “Don’t Stop the Carnival”, the calypso-tinged Soca anthem that allowed the old master to explore and improvise, to advance and retreat, to circle around the main theme with that daring, exploratory, experimental aplomb which was for so long his trademark.
A wiser man than me once memorably described Rollins as ‘pursuing the combination of emotion, memory, thought, and aesthetic design with a command that allows him to achieve spontaneous grandiloquence.…..the horn becomes the vessel for the epic of Rollins’ talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors.”
Rollins on Thursday night proved that even as they fade, age, or head towards their last curtain call, the real masters, and the magic spells they weave, continue to endure.
– Stuart Tempkin
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