“This is what I want to hear in guitar playing,” Anthony Wilson said of Ben Monder. “This is why we’re out here. It’s the reason of doing the whole thing. I bow down.”
(Photo: Brian Bixby)Jun 2, 2026 2:25 PM
Anthony Wilson has had an abundantly diverse career since bursting into notoriety in 1997 with his eponymous, Grammy-nominated debut as a guitarist and arranger. In addition to…
Sonny Rollins performing at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1992
(Photo: Ronald Heard)May 26, 2026 11:21 AM
“Is this going to be another negative, punch-Sonny-Rollins-in-the-eye article for DownBeat?” the man asked with weary resignation as he plopped into a den chair. “Well, I agreed to do it. I know how it’s going to come out anyway. So, go ahead, ask me. I’m ready.”
It was a telephone interview. I imagined Sonny Rollins sitting there in his Hudson River Valley country home north of Rhinebeck, New York; sitting there in a nimbus of ennui waiting to be prodded and poked with an assortment of those unpleasant, blunt instruments we journalists…
