Joshua Redman pays tribute to one of his greatest musical influences with If Ever You Would Leave Us (we play for Rollins), a deeply personal celebration of Sonny Rollins arriving November 20 on Blue Note Records.
Redman’s third Blue Note album brings together 11 selections from the vast Rollins repertoire, performed in a variety of configurations by an exceptional group of musicians. Among the participants are drummer Marcus Gilmore, bassists Christian McBride and Larry Grenadier, Rollins alumni Kevin Hays on piano and Peter Bernstein on guitar, tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, and vocalists Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gabrielle Cavassa.
The album is introduced by “Grand Street,” a hard-swinging interpretation of a lesser-known Rollins composition originally recorded on Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass. Redman is joined on the track by Bernstein, McBride and Gilmore. There is also a direct connection to Rollins’ original recording: Gilmore’s grandfather, legendary drummer Roy Haynes, played on the 1958 album.
The origins of If Ever You Would Leave Us are rooted in the immediate aftermath of Rollins’ death on May 26. Redman says that when he woke up the following day, he felt a strong need to do something in response to the loss, although he initially had no idea what that might be.
He began calling friends and colleagues, and the response was immediate. A group of major jazz musicians made themselves available for recording sessions in New York, with the project coming together within just a few weeks.
For Redman, the loss was deeply personal.
“Sonny’s passing definitely hit me hard,” he says. “It felt not unlike the passing of a parent.”
That connection between the two saxophonists goes back to Redman’s childhood. He discovered Rollins when he was around 10 or 11 years old, shortly after picking up the saxophone. While browsing through the Berkeley Public Library, Redman came across Saxophone Colossus, Rollins’ landmark 1956 album.
Even the title caught his attention.
“I thought, ‘Hey, that’s a pretty bold title,’” Redman recalls.
But it was the music itself that changed everything. Hearing Rollins opened Redman’s ears to the possibilities of jazz improvisation and helped establish the musical direction that would follow throughout his own career.
“When I discovered Sonny Rollins, that was my gateway, and my North Star,” he says.
The influence is evident not simply in Redman’s saxophone playing but in his broader approach to jazz. Rollins represented an ideal of improvisation in which a musician could combine an enormous command of tradition with a highly individual voice. Redman has similarly built a career around balancing original compositions with standards, while continually searching for new ways to approach familiar material.
For Redman, Rollins was more than an important influence. He describes him as his “number one” and as a musical father, grandfather and godfather.
“He’s my biggest influence as an improviser and as a saxophonist,” Redman says. “He was with us forever — for the totality of my life, and a lifetime before mine. He was somebody who felt like he would never leave us.”
That idea provides the emotional center of If Ever You Would Leave Us. The album is not simply a collection of Rollins compositions performed by another generation of musicians. It is Redman’s personal response to an artist whose music helped shape his understanding of what a jazz saxophonist could be.
The range of musicians assembled for the project also reflects the breadth of Rollins’ influence. McBride and Grenadier bring contrasting generations of bass expertise, while Bernstein and Hays have direct connections to Rollins’ own bands. Chris Potter provides another tenor voice capable of engaging with Rollins’ formidable improvisational legacy, while Salvant and Cavassa bring the repertoire into the world of jazz vocals.
The result promises to be both a celebration of Rollins’ compositions and a reflection of how his musical ideas continue to resonate with contemporary jazz musicians.
Rollins spent decades demonstrating that the jazz tradition could remain endlessly creative without abandoning its roots. For Redman, that lesson remains central to the music he makes today.
With If Ever You Would Leave Us, Redman and an extraordinary collective of musicians now return to Rollins’ repertoire not simply to look backward, but to demonstrate how deeply his music continues to live through the musicians he influenced.
And in Redman’s words, perhaps that is the ultimate tribute: Rollins may have left the stage, but through the musicians who continue to play his music, he never really leaves us.
No comments:
Post a Comment