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After
completing his 1985 film THE RETURN OF RUBÉN BLADES for Britain's Channel
4 Television, Philadelphia-based filmmaker Robert Mugge began searching
for another music-related project he could undertake in 1986. In seeming
answer to that question, Mugge's good friend Francis Davis, a prominent
jazz critic also based in Philadelphia, informed him that he had just
done a long interview with jazz saxophone great Sonny Rollins, and
mentioned how warm and welcoming both Rollins and his wife and manager
Lucille Rollins had been.
Davis
went on to reveal that the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra had
commissioned Rollins to write an orchestral piece, and that, together, he
and the orchestra would soon be premiering it in Tokyo, Japan. Rollins
had composed long form pieces before, including his Civil Rights-related
Freedom Suite in 1958 and his musical score for the 1966 British film
ALFIE, but this would be his first work incorporating a symphony
orchestra, which is why he brought in his friend Heikki Sarmanto, a
composer from Finland, to provide arrangements and conduct the premiere
performances.
For
Mugge, this seemed an incredible opportunity to make the sort of film he
had long wished someone had made when John Coltrane premiered "A
Love Supreme" or Duke Ellington premiered "Black, Brown and
Beige" - two ambitious works of the past which had pushed the
boundaries of jazz composition and performance. So, with Davis's help,
Mugge, too, reached out to Sonny and Lucille Rollins and found them
surprisingly amenable to a collaboration.
The
concerto was scheduled for two premiere performances at Tokyo Koseinenkin
Hall on Sunday, May 18, 1986, and Mugge was anxious to secure permission
to film one of those two performances. He soon learned from Lucille
Rollins that both the orchestra and the concert hall were owned by
Yomiuri Shimbun, the world's largest newspaper, as were the Japanese
television network that would broadcast the first of the two performances
and the Japanese radio station that would broadcast the second.
Fortunately, this vertical integration of both cultural and corporate
participants meant that Mugge was able to win full cooperation from
everyone involved.
The
plan they worked out was that, while the television crew covered the
first performance, Mugge and his crew would prepare their own approaches
for shooting the second one. And since the radio crew intended a live
broadcast of the second performance, Mugge's sound man could take a live
audio feed from their recording and mixing truck while Mugge and his
cameramen were shooting. Everything was falling into place.
Funding,
however, took a bit longer. But it, too, came together well enough for
Mugge and three of his longtime collaborators - cameramen Larry McConkey
and Erich Roland and sound man Bill Barth - to fly to Japan in time for
the big event. Britain's Channel 4 Television agreed to cover more than a
third of the film's costs, and a small U.S. theatrical distributor
contributed almost as much. That still left some project costs unfunded.
But Mugge decided to move ahead with what he had and to worry about the
rest once the Japanese footage was safely in the can.
Because
Mugge could only afford two cameramen for shooting an entire orchestra
performance, he knew they also would need to capture assorted scenes for
use in establishing a different visual theme for each movement. Such
scenes would include audience members arriving at the concert hall,
Japanese television and radio technicians recording the first
performance, a wide array of Japanese citizens racing around the streets
of Tokyo, religious parades and rituals, the dazzling Vegas-like signs of
the Ginza district at night, and more. He also knew that, prior to the
concert, he would want to shoot individual interviews with Rollins and
Sarmanto, as well as their personal rehearsals for the coming concerts.
In the end, everything went exactly as intended.
Back
in the states, as Mugge began editing his footage, he decided that future
shooting should build upon the idea of islands. With songs like "St.
Thomas" and "Don't Stop the Carnival," Rollins had long
celebrated the fact that his family had come to America from the
Caribbean. Also, in his Tokyo interview, Rollins proposed that perhaps
the reason the Japanese people loved him so much was because Japan, too,
is an island; and he went so far as to point out that New York City,
where he had been born and always since maintained a residence, is also
an island. Finally, factoring in Rollins's wellknown commitment to
solitary practice on his instrument (including more than a year and a
half of round-the-clock playing on New York's Williamsburg Bridge),
coupled with his commitment to a demanding physical and spiritual
regimen, it was difficult not to see the so-called "saxophone
colossus" as a kind of island himself.
Although
the orchestral footage had turned out wonderfully, Mugge also wanted to
film Rollins performing with a more traditional jazz ensemble. Lucille
Rollins pointed out that Sonny was set to do a summer concert on a small
ship sailing around Manhattan, and that sounded like the perfect way to
establish the notion of New York being an island as well. Unfortunately,
when Mugge checked with the promoters, he learned that the concert would
take place at night, and there would be no place for his crew to plug in
sufficient lighting.
Mugge
then returned to Lucille Rollins, asking where else Sonny would be
performing that summer, and she mentioned Opus 40, a sculpted rock quarry
in upstate New York. Mugge therefore contacted Tad Richards, the longtime
manager of Opus 40 and a stepson of the late sculptor Harvey Fite, who
proved to be far more welcoming. With this new location in mind, Mugge
then traded the "island theme" he had been imagining for a
"colossus theme" which would be beautifully illustrated by
Fite's monument-like rock structures.
For
the August 24 concert, Mugge was able to afford four 16mm cameras, one of
which would be attached to Larry McConkey's Steadicam, plus a 24-track
recording truck. As for Rollins, he and his topnotch ensemble (Bob
Cranshaw on bass, Clifton Anderson on saxophone, Mark Soskin on piano,
and Marvin "Smitty" Smith on drums) started off strong with a
fierce new Rollins composition called "G-Man." The quality
continued through a diverse set of additional songs, but came to an
abrupt halt when, in the midst of some solo improvising, Rollins suddenly
jumped from the sculpted rock stage to another level six feet below. As
his feet hit the new rock surface, he fell onto his back, and simply lay
there for a moment with his eyes closed. Then, just as suddenly, Rollins
shifted his saxophone to his lips again and, without leaving his position
on the ground, began to play the opening to the song "Autumn
Nocturne." Eventually, his very relieved musicians on the level
above him started playing along, and concerned audience members returned
to their seats on blankets and lawn chairs.
Rollins
later stood up and played a couple more songs from that lower level
before ending the show so his wife Lucille could drive him to a nearby
hospital for testing. As is now well known, it turned out that he had
broken his heel but had not wanted to disappoint the audience by halting
the show prematurely. Several days after that, in a park in New York
City, Mugge interviewed jazz critics Ira Gitler, Gary Giddins, and
Francis Davis about Rollins's career. Critic Stanley Crouch had also
agreed to participate but failed to show.
Afterwards,
Mugge interviewed Sonny and Lucille Rollins on the same park bench,
discussing everything from Sonny's development as an artist to Lucille's
roll as his wife, manager, and record producer. On this occasion, Sonny
explained his Opus 40 jump from the stage as simply an attempt to
approach the audience and play for them more directly. However, Lucille
later told Mugge what Sonny had revealed to her, which is that a recent
lacquering of his saxophone had caused it to make unexpected sounds that
day, leading him to have almost a kind of nervous breakdown during his
solo improvisations, which he finally decided to end by taking the
ill-fated jump over the side of the stage. Of course, to fans of Sonny's
career, his unfortunate breaking of his heel simply underlined his
legendary commitment to his art.
Lucille
Rollins passed away in 2004, after suffering a stroke in 2003. That
robbed Sonny of his greatest supporter, but not of his determination to
continue developing his art. Unfortunately, a health issue forced him to
retire from recording and public performance after a final concert in
2012, and he is now enjoying a quiet retirement at his home in Woodstock,
New York. But Rollins's decades of extraordinary record and CD releases,
as well as this 1986 film, give eternal testament to his greatness.
In
addition, Sonny Rollins has received countless honorary doctorates, been
elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (1973), received a Grammy
Award for Lifetime Achievement (2004), received America's National Medal
of Arts (2010), been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(2010), and received a Kennedy Center Honors Award (on his 81st birthday,
September 7, 2011). Just recently, it was announced that the Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the the New York Public
Library, has acquired Rollins's personal archive containing collections
of his papers and recordings. As Rollins pointed out in a related
statement, he was born on 137th Street, just two blocks from the
Schomburg Center.
Finally,
an effort is under way to have New York's Williamsburg Bridge renamed for
the world-famous jazz musician who once spent both day and night
rehearsing on it. On July 7, Robert Mugge's 101-minute portrait titled
SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS (after Rollins's classic 1956 album of that name) will
be newly released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital formats. Mugge himself
supervised the film's 4K remastering and created a new bonus feature
titled LEAPS AND BOUNDS: Robert Mugge on the Making of SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS
for inclusion with the new Blu-ray and DVD. Additional bonus features are
audio-only performances of the Rollins compositions "G-Man" and
"Don't Stop the Carnival," as recorded for the film.
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