When Sonny Rollins picks up the tenor saxophone, the world listens. For nearly half a century, he has played music with the majesty of a Greek God, and today remains one of the few surviving icons from a golden era of jazz that will probably never be equaled.

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Background:
When it comes to his music – and the business of music – Sonny Rollins, in the year 2006, is fully and firmly engaged. In the midst of a spate of honors, including a Grammy win for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, as well as top awards (Artist of the Year and Tenor Saxophonist) from the Jazz Journalists Association and in the Down Beat Critics Poll, Rollins has just released his first new studio recording in five years on his own Doxy label.

Walter Theodore Rollins was born in Harlem, New York on September 7, 1930, of parents native to the Virgin Islands. By the time he was out of school, Rollins was already working with big-name musicians such as Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, and Roy Haynes. In 1951 he debuted as a leader on Prestige; his affiliation with that label also produced classics such as Saxophone Colossus, Worktime, and Tenor Madness (with John Coltrane). In early 1956, until he went out on his own permanently as a leader in the summer of 1957, Rollins played in the Max Roach–Clifford Brown Quintet, one of the most definitive (and tragically short-lived) hard-bop ensembles of its day.

Often with his own pianoless trio, Rollins then entered a tremendously fertile period during which he recorded major works such as A Night at the Village Vanguard, Way Out West, and Freedom Suite. In 1959, Rollins took the first of his legendary sabbaticals from music. Living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he was often spotted on the nearby Williamsburg Bridge at night, deep in a rigorous practice regimen. "I wanted to work on my horn, I wanted to study more harmony, I wanted to better myself," he told Stanley Crouch in The New Yorker, "and I wanted to get out of the environment of all that smoke and alcohol and drugs."

He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004’s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for "Why Was I Born"). In addition, Sonny received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.

In June 2006 Rollins was inducted into the Academy of Achievement – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences.

"I am convinced that all art has the desire to leave the ordinary," Rollins said in a recent interview for the Catalan magazine Jaç, "and to say it one way, at a spiritual level, a state of the exaltation at existence. All art has this in common. But jazz, the world of improvisation, is perhaps the highest, because we do not have the opportunity to make changes. It’s as if we were painting before the public, and the following morning we cannot go back and correct that blue color or change that red. We have to have the blues and reds very well placed before going out to play. So for me, jazz is probably the most demanding art."

More Information:
http://www.sonnyrollins.com/