Saxophone Colossus on Saturday

We have seen Rollins play before and can say without reservation that his act far surpasses any of his exceptional albums. (We would link here to an excellent article on Rollins in this week's New Yorker, but it is lamentably unavailable online.) Rollins is not an artist whom one goes to see hoping to hear recorded favorites faithfully duplicated. Instead, with minimal fanfare, he draws from a catalogue of songs far greater than what our limited knowledge contains and uses them as a base for unrelenting invention. When you hear Rollins on the sax, you are aware that he is actually creating something brand new right then and there. Bostonist imagines this might come close to the wonderment that audiences felt years ago when they first heard John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Ornette Coleman do things that no one had really done before, and do them well. Of couse, at 73, Rollins is a contemporary of the swing and bop innovators of old, and his music continues to have the raw, lively appeal that so much recent jazz lacks (in Bostonist's humble opinion). What more can we say? Go see Sonny Rollins.