This dispatch comes a few days late -- an epoch, in blogtime -- but seems worth posting nonetheless. (My excuse is pedestrian but civic: I’m serving on a jury in a Manhattan criminal trial.) On Sunday afternoon I heard Sonny Rollins at the Tarrytown Music Hall, in a benefit for Hudson Sloop Clearwater, the environmental nonprofit founded by Pete and Toshi Seeger.
By the standards of Mr. Rollins, this was an intimately scaled room. From where I was sitting, about halfway back, the sound was strong and clear, without the booming bass or overbearing drums that can sometimes mar performances by his band. Not that the musicians were holding back: Clifton Anderson, on trombone, was assertively robust, and Kobie Watkins, the young drummer currently in the group, played with a charging vigor. Their effort was matched, and in some ways answered, by the venerable man of the hour.
I’ve seen a number of valiant performances by Sonny Rollins over the years, including a few that felt steeped in struggle. Here his accumulation of energy suggested something more like downhill skiing: not effortless, exactly, but carried on by a quickening momentum, with a weaving back and forth. The concert got better as it went, gliding from “Global Warming” (an aptly named calypso) through an Ellington ballad, a brisk new swinger, a Tin Pan Alley waltz, and another calypso.
Then the command encore, capped off by a casually radiant “Tenor Madness.” Great, bluesy choruses by guitarist Bobby Broom. Potent, proficient drum solo by Watkins. And finally Sonny, in fine, expansive form: introducing and reworking motifs; tossing in the occasional R&B riffage; expanding the harmonic terrain; quoting his own “Sonnymoon for Two” (the equivalent of a rib in the elbow). Then he ambled off, to another approving roar, and a host of well-wishers backstage.
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