Seamus Blake has taken a deep dive into the music of Eddie Harris. “The more that I listened to him, the more I appreciated and recognized the diversity of his kind of talent.”
(Photo: Kate Izor)Aug 25, 2026 12:42 PM
The London-born, Vancouver-raised Seamus Blake, a role model for a generation of aspiring tenor sax players in Canada, recalls the moment he first plugged in. “I started playing…
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…
