On the phone, Sonny Rollins hardly sounded like a lion in winter. More like a lamb. No matter. Bass Concert Hall wouldn’t have presented the 79-year-old tenor saxophonist on Sunday if he wasn’t still blowing. And blowing, and blowing, and blowing. Spring breezes outside met an august wind indoors.
“Back in the Fifties, I started trying to be conscious of my health,” replied Rollins when asked how he approaches the sheer physicality of his style, one similar to John Coltrane’s: blow ‘til candle goes out. “I began eating properly and exercising and lifting weights. That may have something to do with it. I’m sort of like Lionel Hampton used to be. You know, they had him getting up onstage with a wheelchair and he’s taking inhalers and all this stuff. Once he got on the stage, he turned into 16-year-old going crazy up there, up there three hours.
“So I have that sort of thing going for me.”
Did he ever, for just over 90 minutes that, save for a dead sax mic on the first number, left the full hall awestruck. Backed by bass, drums, congas, and guitar – musical foil played by trombonist Clifton Anderson, Rollins’ nephew – the bandleader moved more air than the jet stream, more flow than aerodynamics, more notes than Merry Melodies. Seldom was the horn out of his mouth, and at the hour mark, when the band luxuriated on “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Rollins’ bearded white jaw – square as a John Deere tractor – worked a smile or two.
Closing in the tropics, obliging a true encore afterward with his only vocals of the set, Rollins brought the elements and Austin returned the squall.
This article appears in May 1 • 2009.
