**Winner of the American Book Award (2023)**
**Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award (2023)**
**Jazz Journalists Association's Jazz Awards, Biography/Autobiography of the Year (2022)**
Boston Globe, "Best Books of 2022"
WBGO, "Jazz Lovers' Gift Guide"“A revealing, comprehensive biography... [and] a brimming and organized compendium, something to keep returning to like Rollins’s records…” —
New York Times“Levy paints a vivid picture…Throughout
SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS he weds his extensive research to a feel for detail and narrative; the book is certainly long, but it has too much great reporting to be dry.”—
Los Angeles Times"[Author Aidan Levy] distills essential truths... and ties strands of Mr. Rollins’s history together in poignant ways.”—
Wall Street Journal“Aidan Levy’s indefatigable research and interviewing process has allowed him to fill
SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS with a vast chorus of voices.”
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The Wire"A figure of such heroic stature deserves a monument worthy of him. And until something even larger and more expansive comes along, Aidan Levy’s new biography of Rollins will do nicely… an admiring yet clear-eyed chronicle.”
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The Nation“An incredibly deep, well-researched and thoughtfully written biography.”
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DownBeat“[An] exhaustive, definitive biography.”—
Air Mail“Read it you must....a remarkable read.”—
Marlbank“There’s no doubt that
SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS will be a great resource for future jazz scholars.” —
Nelson George Mixtape“A long book allows for a luxurious detail....
Saxophone Colossus does what the best biographies do: Gives you enough information to pursue your own lines of inquiry.” —
Point of Departure"Monumental."—
WICN "Inquiry"“A wonderful detailed and insightful journey through the life of an incredible artist and thinker. It is unlikely anyone will pen anything about Rollins, and maybe any other jazz musician, that will be its equal.” —
NYS Music“A memorable work that will become the standard biography of the saxophone giant and should be embraced by all jazz fans and general readers. Highly recommended.”—
Library Journal“[Saxophone Colossus is filled with]...precise and ravishing descriptions of Rollins’ music, ‘tireless work ethic,’ inspirations, frustrations with the record industry, social and environmental activism, and surprising collaborations.”
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Booklist"[The] definitive account of a jazz icon."
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Kirkus“Moving and meticulously researched.” —
Publishers Weekly“Scrupulous and exhaustive... Levy comes as close to the enigma of Rollins as any biographer could.” —
Telegraph (UK)“Rollins has never deviated from the obsessive nature of his calling. He’s found a like-minded biographer, who paints pictures with words as adeptly as Rollins did with his saxophone. Subject and author deserve each other.” —
iPaper (UK)“Sonny Rollins told stories through his horn. His ‘telling,’ no matter how intricate or elaborate, was always pure, honest, and vulnerable, while the storyteller himself remained elusive and intangible. Until now. In Aidan Levy, Mr. Rollins has found his chronicler, an immensely talented writer whose lyricism, mastery, and dedication to truth matches that of his subject. The result is an opera, a calypso, a magnificent symphony that captures All of Him: Sonny, Newk, Theodore, Wally, Brung Biji, and the one and only Saxophone Colossus.”—
Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original"When I was a boy, I knew nothing of Sonny Rollins, the man, but his music set me free. Now, forty-some-odd years later, this book has gifted me a profound, almost revelatory, appreciation of all it took for our singularly Great American Improviser to exist, to persist, to survive, to thrive, to comprehend, to transcend, to create, to liberate, to
be — at once the towering, omnipotent, immortal Colossus and the humble, gentle, questioning, questing human. Sonny Rollins has always been the master storyteller of the jazz idiom. What an illuminative joy it is to finally read the story of his own life so exhaustively and engagingly told."—
Joshua Redman, Grammy-nominated saxophonist, composer, and educator“Sonny Rollins is the most acclaimed and celebrated jazz musician alive. His fearless creativity and willingness to test his limits are the stuff of leg- ends, as are his modesty, discipline and self-criticism. With deep research and meticulous documentation, Levy, with the aid of Rollins, gives us a revelatory and richer picture of the man and his era. A colossus of a book.” —
John Szwed, author of Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra and So What: The Life of Miles Davis“In this forensically researched biography of an American hero, the elusive Sonny Rollins stands revealed not only as the great Jazz Maker but a man of profundity and passions. By combining the story of his rise as a Saxophone Colossus with a picture of the Black artist in an age when social progress was not necessarily a given, Levy has produced a memorable book.”—
Val Wilmer, author of As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957-1977“The life and music of Sonny Rollins as chronicled by acclaimed author Aidan Levy is an insightful view into the daily struggles, achievements and spiritual journey of whom I like to refer to as the ‘Maestro di Maestri,’ Mr. Sonny Rollins. All I can say is:
II: READ LISTEN LISTEN READ :II
You will be enlightened as I am.”
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Joe Lovano, saxophonist, composer, producer, educator and Grammy winner"Aidan Levy has provided the jazz world and beyond an important documentation of one of the greatest musicians of all time. Sonny Rollins spoke his own language through the saxophone--just check out his solo on 'Alfie'! And
Saxophone Colossus provides for us in words a portal to deeper understanding of this legendary jazz giant!"—
Terri Lyne Carrington, Grammy-winning drummer, producer, and composer“[The] authoritative book on Rollins . . . among the best-researched books ever devoted to jazz.” —
Lewis Porter, Grammy-nominated pianist, composer, educator, and author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music and Playback with Lewis Porter
