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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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Memoirs

SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS

Aidan Levy

The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins

The long-awaited first full biography of legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins, chronicling the gripping story of a freedom fighter and spiritual seeker whose life has been as much of a thematic improvisation as his music.

In the jazz community, the legendary Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is one of the most iconoclastic jazz improvisers and tenor saxophonists of our time, with countless classic albums, dozens of Grammys and lifetime achievement awards, and even a National Medal of Arts under his belt. Widely considered the greatest living jazz musician, he is one of our last links to a rapidly fading past. And yet while his music has long been accessible to the public, his life backstage has remained largely undocumented - until now.

Saxophone Colossus introduces us to the man behind the myth. Featuring exclusive interviews with Rollins himself as well as his family members, friends, and collaborators, this book is the first-ever narrative biography of a living legend, flush with fresh insight and candor.

Our story starts in Harlem, where Rollins' precocious talent landed him in the recording studio with artists like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie - all before the age of 20. He reached his prolific heyday soon after, recording 15 albums - including Tenor Madness (featuring a blues battle with John Coltrane), the overtly political Freedom Suite, and of course, the iconic Saxophone Colossus - within three years. By the mid-'60s, Rollins' own successful group almost single-handedly resuscitated the Village Vanguard, performed at Carnegie Hall, and headlined Paris's famed Olympia Theatre. Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served a 10-month sentence for armed robbery and later faced a battle with heroin addiction that threatened to derail his career. He was also a tireless civil rights advocate and environmentalist, communicating his passionate and sometimes controversial opinions through his music. The course of his life, much like his infamous improvisations, vacillates erratically between revelatory victories and shattering defeats, with never a dull moment in between.

The story of Sonny Rollins - innovative, unpredictable, ripe with contradiction, larger than life - is the story of jazz itself. More than a soundtrack to the times, jazz ultimately represents the seamless movement between harmony and dissonance, and Sonny's own narrative of struggle and triumph is as relevant today as it was sixty years ago. Whether you're a die-hard jazz fan, a budding civil rights activist, or a devoted reader of biographies on "American originals," Saxophone Colossus is sure to strike a chord.

Aidan Levy is the author of Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. A former Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, JazzTimes, The Nation and other publications. The book will have the full support of the Leon Levy Center in the promotion of this book, which is also the first jazz biography backed by the fellowship. (Previous books written with the support of the LLC include D.T. Max's Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace and Adam Begley's Updike.)

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Book Published 2022-12-06 by Hachette Book Group - New York (USA)

Comments

In an incredibly deep, well-researched and thoughtfully written biography, author Aiden Levy dives into the world of Sonny Rollins, one of the greatest tenor saxophonists to ever walk the planet. Clocking in at 784 pages (including the index), Saxophone Colossus comes in as an exhaustive work, one that can be enjoyed, studied and absorbed thoroughly by Rollins-ologists for the ages. Read more...

[The] authoritative book on Rollins... among the best-researched books ever devoted to jazz.

Sonny Rollins told stories through his horn. His 'telling,' no matter how intricate or elaborate, was always pure, honest, and vulnerable, while the storyteller himself remained elusive and intangible. Until now. In Aidan Levy, Mr. Rollins has found his chronicler, an immensely talented writer whose lyricism, mastery, and dedication totruth matches that of his subject. The result is an opera, a calypso, a magnificent symphony that captures All of Him: Sonny, Newk, Theodore, Wally, Brung Biji, and the one and only Saxophone Colossus.

Sonny Rollins is the most acclaimed and celebrated jazz musician alive. His fearless creativity and willingness to test his limits are the stuff of legends, as are his modesty, discipline and self-criticism. With deep research and meticulous documentation, Levy, with the aid of Rollins, gives us a revelatory and richer picture of the man and his era. A colossus of a book.

When I was a boy, I knew nothing of Sonny Rollins, the man, but his music set me free. Now, forty-some-odd years later, this book has gifted me a profound, almost revelatory, appreciation of all it took for our singularly Great American Improviser to exist, to persist, to survive, to thrive, to comprehend, to transcend, to create, to liberate, to be - at once the towering, omnipotent, immortal Colossus and the humble, gentle, questioning, questing human. Sonny Rollins has always been the master storyteller of the jazz idiom. What an illuminative joy it is to finally read the story of his own life so exhaustively and engagingly told.

Aidan Levy has provided the jazz world and beyond an important documentation of one of the greatest musicians of all time. Sonny Rollins spoke his own language through the saxophone - just check out his solo on 'Alfie'! And Saxophone Colossus provides for us in words a portal to deeper understanding of this legendary jazz giant!

Excerpt: An exclusive excerpt from Aidan Levy's definitive new biography of the jazz giant captures him in the midst of his Bridge years Read more...

The life and music of Sonny Rollins as chronicled by acclaimed author Aidan Levy is an insightful view into the daily struggles, achievements and spiritual journey of whom I like to refer to as the 'Maestro di Maestri,' Mr. Sonny Rollins. All I can say is: READ LISTEN LISTEN READ! You will be enlightened as I am.

Aidan Levy's SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS went onsale on Dec 6, 2022! Since then it' been named to the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2022! Read more...

In this forensically researched biography of an American hero, the elusive Sonny Rollins stands revealed not only as the great Jazz Maker but a man of profundity and passions. By combining the story of his rise as a Saxophone Colossus with a picture of the Black artist in an age when social progress was not necessarily a given, Levy has produced a memorable book.

This comprehensive and compelling biography of perhaps the greatest living jazz musician is both well-written and thoroughly researched. Written with the cooperation but not interference of the subject, this book promises to be the most important jazz biography since Robin DG Kelley's biography of Thelonious Monk. One caveat: The book is 784 pages. But a tenor titan deserves a titan book. Read more...