Artists
"…By the finale, everyone knew what a jazz giant sounded like. Long live Sonny Rollins" - The Evening Standard
Sonny Rollins is known as the original saxophone colossus, a name he earned when he was just 26 years old playing alongside jazz greats Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis.
Now 80, he is the last of the great bebop saxophonists, and still has incredible form playing with the energy of a man half his age. He refers to jazz as “the king of all musics,” and still performs 20 to 25 dates a year at the cream of international jazz festivals.
One of Sonny's most recent festival appearances was at the Wellington Jazz Festival when he performed for the first time in New Zealand at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday, 11 June 2011. The Dominion Post reviewer Colin Morris summed his concert up: "from the almost standing ovation of his entrance and the first note of D Cherry, the audience whooped and hollered every swoop and bend, every soaring note, every fist-jabbed acknowledgment to the audience... On a filthy wet night in Wellington, the sun burst through."
It was fitting that on the same weekend of his New Zealand performance Sonny was awarded the Musician of the Year gong at the Jazz Journalists Awards. Other accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Grammy awarded to him in 2004 and recognition of his exceptional contribution to the Arts by the White House with the presentation of the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2011. Many of Rollins' compositions are in the standard repertoire of jazz musicians.