John Coltrane

Sunday

Philip Clark

An unvarnished insight into the mind of Sonny Rollins

In the mid-1950s, alongside his close friend and intimate confidant John Coltrane, the revered saxophonist Sonny Rollins completely revolutionized notions about how the tenor saxophone could function within modern jazz. In landmark albums like Freedom Suite, Way Out West and Tenor Madness, Rollins pushed the art of melodic improvisation to transcendent new heights, his charismatic sound, his snaking melodies and his rhythmic liquidity ringing the changes as surely as Louis Armstrong had done thirty years earlier. And like Louis, and later Miles Davis, there came a point where Rollins wrestled free of the jazz aficionado’s gaze to become admired by a more general audience.

rollins

Sunday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Tenor badness

In Stephen Spielberg’s 2004 comedy The Terminal, Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is a native of Krakozhia, a small eastern European country engulfed in civil war. When Navorski lands at JFK, he discovers that his passport is invalid as America does not recognize Krakozhia’s new regime. He’s stuck in the airport for months and unable to accomplish his mission: completing his father’s quest to obtain the autographs of all 57 musicians in Art Kane’s 1958 photograph ‘A Great Day in Harlem’, a who’s who of jazz greats (including Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk), captured on East 126th Street in daylight without their instruments.

benny golson

Monday

Andrew L. Shea

The real McCoy

‘My current pianist, McCoy Tyner, holds down the harmonies, and that allows me to forget them,’ John Coltrane said in an interview in 1961. ‘He’s sort of the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground from time to time.’ Tyner, who died on Friday at the age of 82, will be remembered for his crucial role supporting John Coltrane during some of the legendary saxophonist’s most creative years. But on the occasion of Tyner’s death it’s also worth recognizing that ‘the Real McCoy’ had a penetrating voice and lasting influence all his own.A son of west Philadelphia born in 1938, Tyner was encouraged by supportive parents and was playing piano by 13.

mccoy tyner