Search - Sonny Rollins :: Sonny Meets Hawk

Jazz masters at their best

Nikica Gilic | Zagreb, Croatia | 04/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is AMAZING if you ask me; although robust and virtuoso tenor sax of Sonny Rollins is obviously a successor of Hawk's vast tenor-sax legacy, and Hawk could obviously still play very very strong at the time this was recorded, I didn't expect such a magnificent blending of different styles...



There's nothing pompous or overblown here although the players don't fear extending themselves in any direction, so their interaction is at the sime time witty, surprising at, somehow, logical, as if they had played together for countless many times (they haven't; this seems to be their second musical encounter).



My favorite track? Hard to pick - maybe Summertime and Lover Man could compete for the title... The rest of the band (with Paul Bley on piano) is quite competent and complements the giants very well.



BTW - if you like creative collaboration of father and son figures, you might want to listen to Dizzy Gillespie working beautifully together with his "father" Roy Eldridge in Roy and Diz... Hawkins is harmonically and rhythmically between Roy and Dizzy, while Sonny is somewhere between Dizzy and Don Cherry...



BTW; part 2

I've found on an internet portal a video recording of a concert in which Dizzy Gillespie's band starts a not so inventive version of "Umbrella Man", and then suddenly Louis Armstrong shows up and starts beautiful interaction with Dizzy's trumpet... If someone knows a cd or dvd where Diz and Satch play together, I'd be greatful for a comment or an amazon link under my customer comment..."