Sonny Rollins Old Flames CD

Throughout his remarkable career, Sonny Rollins has betrayed a restless nature, unwilling to accept anything but continual growth and refinement. Thus we witness his periodic musical and spiritual sabbaticals, the constant shuffling of personnel, and his commitment to a deeper understanding of harmony. In the twenty-plus years since his return to the jazz wars, his sound has undergone an extraordinary evolution: the richness of his timbre, the variety of attacks, the layering of overtones and inflections--it's as if that immense, solid beam of light he projected in the 1950s had been run through a prism, and broken into all its spectral components. OLD FLAMES finds Rollins looking back with autumnal grandeur upon the great love songs of his youth, still looking for fresh, modern ways of interpreting these classics.

To that end he collaborates with the great saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath, whose deep brass charts add tonal depth and burnished harmonic motion to "Darn That Dream" and "Prelude To A Kiss." On the former, Heath shades Rollins' gusty melodic effusions and gravelly hollers in billowing choral declamations and quasar-like rejoinders; after a pensive piano interlude by Tommy Flanagan, Sonny returns with a brilliant, circuitous recitative (including an aside from the "Woody Woodpecker" theme), coming to a climax over a piquant brass chord. The brass acts more in a rhythmic manner of a big band on Ellington's "Prelude To A Kiss," where Sonny actively engages drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Flanagan in some animated give and take.

With just Clifton Anderson's trombone for tonal contrast, Rollins sustains this broad orchestral vision on the remaining tunes, the most exciting of which is his own "Time Slimes," which offers a fulsome harmonic canvas, taut polyrhythmic interplay, complex melodic variations and some superhuman low notes. Of the remaining ballads, Rollins and Flanagan approach "I See Your Face Before Me" with remarkable tenderness and restraint, while the title tune rouses the saxophonist to lofty romantic heights.

Recorded at Clinton Recording Studios, New York, New York in July & August 1993.

Personnel: Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone), Clifton Anderson (trombone), Tommy Flanagan (piano), Bob Cranshaw (electric & acoustic basses), Jack DeJohnette (drums).

Brass Choir: Jimmy Heath (conductor, arranger), Jon Faddis, Byron Stripling (flugelhorns), Alex Brofsky (French horn), Bob Stewart (tuba).

Entertainment Weekly (1/14/94, p.55) - "...This nearly all-ballads set from the foremost living improviser balances both strength and sensitivity and provides the tenor saxophonist with the most thoughtful accompaniment he's had on record in years...." - Rating: A
Down Beat (2/94, p.46) - 4 Stars - Very Good - "...OLD FLAMES finds Sonny Rollins in a sentimental mood. He embraces this program of standards, predominantly ballads, and achieves a low-key, after-hours ambience....a `lion in winter' recording, given to subtlety and insight..."
Audio Magazine (12/93, p.114) - Sound: A- / Performance: A - "...Rollins embraces the familiar without stepping back in time; his innovations are rooted in a sense of the here and now that can only result from a lifetime of experience...."