Take a minute just to contemplate the power and glory of Sonny Rollins and the sheer scale of his achievement. Whether it is getting completely inside the most tender of ballads or delivering the most audaciously fiendish bebop run imaginable, or even charming an audience with flavours of the Caribbean, he knows the perfect route. Right there when bebop was freshly minted and he was running around with Miles and the fast set, through his startling early flowering with stone classic Saxophone Colossus, to his London jazz club days in the 60s, and up to today when he steps up to the mark once again live and in the studio. Very few come near.

Rollins – Unique And Absorbing. No, not a celebration in advance of the great saxophonist’s top billing at this year’s London Jazz Festival, but the headline of a review in Melody Maker during his first visit to London in 1965. “His nightly sessions [at Ronnie Scott’s] are something which no serious student of jazz can afford to miss,” continued the review and it has remained that way ever since. A Rollins concert continues to be an event to be savoured, Rolling Stone magazine once saying that in the future people will boast of having seen Rollins perform much as the lucky few now boast of having seen the great bebop pioneer Charlie Parker.

Sonny Rollins, now 79, is one of the last of the titans from the great era of modern jazz. Noted for his bold tone, propulsive phrasing and buoyant lyricism, he is a master at blending the contradictory impulses of contemporary jazz. He swings even as he fragments rhythms and as he ranges through chorus after chorus of heated improvisation, you always feel the melody is a stone’s throw away. His playing imparts, somehow, a simultaneous sense of struggle and celebration that has helped make him a legend in his own lifetime.

This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #136 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE copy of the latest Partisans CD 'By Proxy'.