May 26, 2026 11:08 AM
Sonny Rollins Passes Away at 95
Sonny Rollins, the iconic saxophonist, composer and improviser whose career stretched from the origins of bebop to 21st…
Tony Scott died March 28. He was 85.
Born Anthony Joseph Sciacca on June 17, 1921 in Morristown, N.J., Scott was drawn to jazz at an early age. He once said that the first time he distinguished the sound of the clarinet soaring above a jazz band it seemed to him to embody the essence of life and freedom.
After a few years of private tuition, he attended the Juillard School of Music in New York. While still a student he started to feel his way in the New York jazz scene playing whenever he could, wherever he could.
Scott joined the military after graduation and was in the Army Band. He was one of the first musicians to interpret Bop on the clarinet and continued to sit in on jam sessions in the New York clubs, frequently playing several venues in the course of an evening.
Always restless and a wanderer at heart, Scott traveled through Europe, Africa and Asia before settling in Rome in the 1970s.
Onstage, Rollins would move about restlessly, thrusting his tenor sax in the air as he blew.
May 26, 2026 11:08 AM
Sonny Rollins, the iconic saxophonist, composer and improviser whose career stretched from the origins of bebop to 21st…
To the world, James Blood Ulmer was a legend, a visionary and a musical force whose sound was distinctive and unique. To his family, he was their teacher, their storyteller and a source of strength.
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Ibrahim was an early jazz acolyte, studying the music via 78s he would buy from soldiers stationed in South Africa — who also gave him the nickname “Dollar.”
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