Sonny Rollins - Rollins in Holland review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

The Guardian 0

(Resonance Records)
Unreleased recordings of a 1967 tour capture an improv masterclass with Ruud Jacobs and Han Bennink

The creative acquisitiveness of improvisation sounds boundless in the work of jazz sax master Sonny Rollins. He turned 90 in September. Every timeless theme and every long-forgotten one, every pop hit or fragment of an aria, every quirky mannerism he has heard in the jostling soundtrack of the world seems to have been filed somewhere in his head. These fragments make warped reappearances live, sometimes in apposite places, sometimes in provocatively oppositional ones. That’s what put the phrase “the greatest living improviser” on the flyers to Rollins’ gigs.