Crossing bridges over sculpted airs
It was in New York, one September 7, 1930. Theodore Walter Rollins came into this world. Over the years, that child from Harlem hung a sax around his neck and began to draw the wind in a jazzy way. By the years, we all would know him as Sonny Rollins and would let our minds go into each groove of all vinyl that his breath was pleased to sculpt. Because each one of his recording are more than a record, they are very good music. Each piece is a sculpture of the moment, the moment captured and blown through his sax into our minds. And these moments become new with each listening of his albums, hours of sessions with the trumpet of Miles Davis and the pianos of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. And when one’s memory is bath by his 1962 album The bridge, then there’s nothing more to be desired than the feet of the mind does not stop and keep jumping over puddles and cutting paper airplanes flying over the Rollins bridge. His 82 years are the juggernaut of talent that seizes the public but required to share the stage with him, the stage of life that takes us away, the Cutting edge around the corners that he shapes as no one, a Love at first sight made here and now, in the back and Dancing in the dark. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Mister Sonny Rollins.
The pleasure of seeing him appear on stage is indescribable. Walking fragile with a stoop, with its long and wide red shirt, his white hair full of energy and a shaped beard, his presence carries an aura of mysticism. As the band begins to play, Sonny Rollins soon takes charge. The air becomes syncopated wind on his sax, and the overwhelming power of the legends of jazz seizes the public. There is something reverential at Sonny Rollins’ concerts, which artistically is not a positive aspect. But one only has to let oneself go with the winged hunches that he incessantly creates to realize that the bridges are always possible and the darkness doesn’t pursue us because it’s a sister that embraces us fearful of an excess of light, the real danger. Let’s dance in the dark while crossing the bridge of life.
SONNY ROLLINS videos here
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Tedkurland Associates
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