There’s not much time left, so here are three of my best memories of live music over this crazy year, and a couple handfuls of favorite recordings that promise to be listenable for quite a while forward —
Sonny the sax king
At age 80, Sonny Rollins is indisputably the greatest living jazz tenor saxophonist, proved last night throughout a 2-hour set at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theater in which harmolodic sage Ornette Coleman sat in, backed by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride, on “Tenor Madness.” “Sonnymoon For Two”. Rollins was hunched and hobbled when he came onstage, but once he started blowing he stood upright and blasted his big bold sound with energy that brooked no diminishment of strength or inspiration, bending only to fire another fussilade of freshly wrought invention as if from his guts.
Guest brassman Roy Hargrove paced Rollins melodically on “I Can’t Get Started” and one of Sonny’s vamp-based songs; Jim Hall had to tune up his guitar while starting to interact with Sonny on “In A Sentimental Mood,” but found his place, and Sonny’s standing band w/ guitarist Russell Malone, elec. bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Kobie Watkins and conga-player Sammy Figueroa was better than solid — but it was the Old Man himself who kept raising the stakes with gruff, hearty, spirited, virtuosic roars and runs.
“Big Three” jazz guitarists extended to a couple dozen
In his article on the collaboration of Jim Hall and Bill Frisell in the April issue of Jazz Times, Evan Haga refers to the “Big Three” of current jazz guitarists: Frisell, John Scofield and John McLaughlin.
Much as I dig them (and Hall), that designation is a rather typical journalistic foreshortening of a field, relegating to a rich second tier such high-profile powerhouse contenders as Pat Metheny, Pat Martino, Larry Coryell, James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid, George Benson, Les Paul, Russell Malone, Al Di Meola, Kenny Burrell, Toninho Horta, Romero Lumbambo, Stanley Jordan, Charlie Hunter, Lionel Loueke, Birelli Lagrene, John Pizzarelli, Mike Stern, Leni Stern, Lee Ritenour, Ben Monder, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson, Elliott Sharp, Doug Wamble, Jeff Parker, Earl Klugh and Dave Fiuczynski, for starters. Whaddya think, readers: Are McLaughlin, Scofield and Frisell all that guitaristically dominant?
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