celebrating Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins, the wonderful saxophonist and composer now in his 80’s, was announced last week along with several other great & famous performing artists like Yo Yo Ma, Meryl Streep and Neil Diamond, as a recipient of 2011 Kennedy Center Honors. For those of us believing in the positive and open-ended potentials of genuine spontaneity in improvisational work, Mr. Rollins represents a highly inspiring success in both theory and practice. As Eric Nisenson enthuses in his book Open Sky (page 213, published in 2000) “Listening to him play those long solos that can veer in any and every direction, solos that he has created on the spot, and that will never be heard again, is a deeply spiritual experience. It reminds us that we are living in the here and now, in this very moment even as I write these words or you read them. How many of us remain trapped by our past and spend so much time worried about the future, while life is flowing right through us?”
see also: http://www.stlamerican.com/entertainment/living_it/article_784ba790-1f7f-11e1-a2dd-001871e3ce6c.html
David Salminen 