Sonny Rollins, one of the greatest jazz saxophonists of all time, has died aged 95.<\/p>\n
His death was announced on his website<\/a> on Monday, \u201cwith deep sorrow and profound love\u201d. His publicist Terri Hinte also confirmed the news.<\/p>\n No cause of death was given but the statement said \u201cthe Saxophone Colossus\u201d died at his home in Woodstock, New York, on Monday afternoon. The statement quoted Rollins reflecting on death: \u201cI think when the creative person ends, he continues in the next existence. I\u2019m a person who believes this life isn\u2019t the be-all and end-all of everything. A spiritual person doesn\u2019t feel like that.\u201d<\/p>\n With more than 60 albums released from the late-1940s onwards, including collaborations with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and others, Rollins was one of the last living stars of the bebop generation<\/a>, who took jazz from a predominantly dance or ballad form into startlingly expressive new territory.<\/p>\n Rollins himself was a genius of melody, whose bright, catchy lines \u2013 whether jazz standards or self-penned \u2013 would be unpicked, extended and refashioned in improvised and sometimes epic solos. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis<\/a> has called him \u201cthe greatest improviser in the history of jazz\u201d alongside Louis Armstrong; when presenting him with the 2010 National Medal of the Arts in 2011, Barack Obama said Rollins had inspired him to \u201ctake risks that I might not otherwise have taken\u201d.<\/p>\n He was born Walter Theodore Rollins in New York City in 1930, and raised in its Harlem district, earning the nickname Sonny from his grandmother. Inspired by a piano-playing sister and violin-playing brother, as well as jazz heroes such as Louis Jordan and Fats Waller,<\/a> he started learning the saxophone when he was seven. Such was the vibrancy of his area\u2019s jazz scene that one of his first bands, in high school, featured future stars Jackie McLean<\/a>, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor; just after leaving school he began playing with local talents such as Bud Powell and touring stars such as JJ Johnson<\/a>, and started composing his own work.<\/p>\n Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins perform together in 1957. Photograph: Bob Parent\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Rollins once described himself as \u201cprimitive \u2026 I\u2019m going with my feelings more than my brain\u201d, and it was this willingness to break with convention and embrace improvisation that helped chart a new course for jazz alongside Davis, Charlie Parker and others in the bebop scene that soon loosened further into hard bop and post-bop. Davis himself wrote about how Rollins quickly became \u201ca legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians \u2026 he was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas\u201d. For his part, Rollins said when reminiscing about his early life: \u201cJazz is good. It\u2019s not just lecture music, it\u2019s not shake your booty music. It\u2019s everything. It doesn\u2019t make you feel like fighting. It makes you feel that there is a God.\u201d<\/p>\n He was sidetracked by heroin, though, and in 1950 committed an armed robbery to raise funds to feed his habit, later describing himself as \u201creally a despicable character \u2026 I alienated everybody except my mother\u201d. He was jailed for 10 months on Rikers Island in New York, but managed to kick his habit with a rehab programme in 1955.<\/p>\n Getting clean helped spur an astonishing burst of creativity: Rollins released his debut album as bandleader in 1953, and recorded 17 more by the end of the decade including landmarks such as Saxophone Colossus (1956)<\/a>, which featured signature tune St Thomas<\/a>, nodding to calypso and named after his mother\u2019s Caribbean place of birth; the piano-free \u201cstrolling\u201d style explored on Way Out West (1957); and Freedom Suite (1958)<\/a>, where his emancipated composition on the 20-minute title track became an elegant argument for freedom in the midst of the growing civil rights movement. Collaborators in this period included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey and others.<\/p>\n In 1959, Rollins took a three-year break from recording and on-stage performance, honing his craft by practising for up to 15 hours a day on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge, partly so as not to disturb his neighbours \u2013 it inspired his 1962 comeback album The Bridge<\/a>. Outside of another sabbatical between 1969 and 1971, when he travelled to an Indian ashram to study yoga, philosophy and meditation, these two decades saw him join the avant-garde and fusion directions in the jazz scene, playing Latin American music on What\u2019s New (1962); freer (but still highly melodic) improvisations on Sonny Meets Hawk! (1963) and East Broadway Run Down (1966); and, in the 1970s, R&B-inflected takes on material by Stevie Wonder, Patrice Rushen and others. He also composed and performed the soundtrack to the 1966 Michael Caine film Alfie (minus the theme song).<\/p>\n In the 1980s, he continued to fuse his playing with funk and calypso, and added uncredited soloing to the Rolling Stones\u2019 1981 album Tattoo You. He focused his live performances<\/a> away from \u201csmoke-filled, cash-register-banging night clubs\u201d and on to larger stages, and campaigned around the growing climate crisis with benefit concerts and his 1998 album Global Warming<\/a>. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s like we\u2019re on the Titanic, but everybody\u2019s just watching Titanic,\u201d he later said.<\/p>\n Sonny Rollins performing in 2012. Photograph: Jack Vartoogian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Rollins married twice, first (and briefly) to Dawn Finney in 1957. He met his next wife, Lucille Pearson, that year, and they married in 1965, remaining together until her death in 2004. The couple were at home just six blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11 \u2013 they evacuated to upstate New York with Rollins carrying only his saxophone. Three days later, he drove to Boston for an acclaimed live set that would be released as Without a Song: The 9\/11 Concert<\/a>, which won him a Grammy for best jazz instrumental solo. Rollins later told the Guardian: \u201cI lost many prized possessions in 9\/11 and learned a lesson \u2013 possessions are not where it\u2019s at.\u201d<\/p>\n He earned a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 2004, and after touring and performing throughout his life, retired in 2014 after being diagnosed with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis. \u201cI went through a period of depression; I was really low<\/a>,\u201d he said in 2017. \u201cI\u2019d been on this life quest to try and fulfil my potential with music, and not being able to play any more meant I wasn\u2019t going to get a chance to do that. But I eventually came out of my depression when I realised that rather than being depressed I should be grateful<\/a>. I had an opportunity to live a life as a musician, which I always wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n