Jazz Great Sonny Rollins on iTunes and Youtube

Son­ny Rollins, who made his name with the acclaimed album Sax­o­phone Colos­sus, has defied the
fate

of oth­er jazz greats. He’s long out­lived his impor­tant con­tem­po­raries – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelo­nious Monk – and, at 76 years old, he’s still out there issu­ing new albums (the lat­est being Son­ny, Please), and even new web videos.

Jazz fans will want to explore the new 12-part web video series that’s just being rolled out. Sched­uled to be released in month­ly install­ments (a new one on the 23rd of each month), the video series will “intro­duce Rollins, the man and his music, to new lis­ten­ers,” using “musi­cal per­for­mances, both cur­rent and clas­sic, inter­views and exclu­sive behind-the-scenes videos.” (See the full project descrip­tion here.) Enti­tled “The Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast,” the col­lec­tion can be accessed on iTunes in video. But you can also find the videos on Youtube/Google Video if you don’t have (or know how to use) a video-enabled iPod. That may be the eas­i­est way to go.

The first episode, “On The Road with Son­ny,” just came out in the past few weeks, and it fea­tures “behind the scenes rehearsal footage from two late 2006 Ari­zona con­certs.” You can watch it below. If you want to con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the series, then just vis­it sonnyrollins.com toward the end of each month, and they’ll post each new install­ment.

See Open Cul­ture’s Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion