Sonny Rollins experience...

It was a hot summer day when my 3 friends and me started our journey to Perugia, Italy on the Umbria Jazz Festival 2007. We departed Zagreb, Croatia early in the morning all worked up and excited about the whole experience as we bought the tickets to see Sonny Rollins several months ago and we couldn't believe the day had finally arrived! We were going to the Sonny Rollins concert and we're going to see him live!!! Hell, yeah! It was going to be an experience we will never forget. To see this legend in person playing his ass off sounded rather appealing.

After stopping in some weird restaurants on the way where we couldn't get a normal pasta, bathing in a lake near Perugia, we finally arrived there. We managed to get rooms in the hostel in the very center (lucky, no?), had a quick shower and were on our way to the festival. Perugia is a small town on the top of one hill and had a remarkable view, lovely houses, laid back atmosphere and rivers of people pouring in the streets to hear good jazz. I thought this was impossible! As most of you are aware of, jazz isn't exactly mainstream and most young people go to rock concerts or some big festivals with popular bands, but this was different. Young, old, men, women, everyone into jazz came to take part in this big event. The whole festival is really well organized, there were concerts on every corner and you could hear big bands, funky bands, soul, Dixie, all that you can imagine! But we had no time to wonder around cause we had to get our tickets to see Sonny. He was the reason why we went there and we headed straight to the arena where he was supposed to hold the concert to prepare ourselves for the event we'd been waiting for. We got the tickets and checked out the stands where they were selling his CDs, materials from the festival and other thingies. Gosh...so many cds! What to take?? Tough..

The concert was held in the open air and Sonny came on stage...aaaahhhhhh....standing ovations started before he even started! What a warm welcome he had! He started playing immediately and only addressed us after several songs. The band was groovin' and he played many tunes from his albums. One standard that he played was "Body and Soul" and one song from his recent album "Someday I will find you". Really nice tunes, nothing too modern, swingin' at one point, groovin' on another. We were in a trance and couldn't stop watching him. Man, that's Sonny over there! That old guy barely walking but playing his sax like it was a part of him...simply amazing.

The band he was with included Clifton Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Kimati Dinizulu (percussion), TBA (drums). Kimati Dinizulu had a pretty cool solo at one point when they left him alone to do his thing and we sure appreciated it. Once they finished the crowd was asking for more. And I have to point out that our little group (me and my 3 friends) were the loudest and craziest there! Since we had no idea how to call him back in Italian we improvised and started yelling "SONNY, RITORNA!!!". That sure caught everyone's attention. Nothing. We went to the stage and started singing St. Thomas, Sonny's tune! Again, we caught everyone's attention. Sonny came back, greeted us warmly but that was it. He was done... ahhhh...we couldn't believe he wouldn't play a bit more! But he gave us a lot, played many tunes, for more than an hour. And we were happy. Our mission was complete. We saw Sonny Rollins live. And it was the experience we were hoping for and more....

We got back to the festival which was still going on. Just to mention that there were pretty amazing musicians taking part in this festival such as George Benson and Al Jarreau, Keith Jarrett Trio, Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau, Gilberto Gil and more...

Anyway, my suggestion is - go to UMBRIA JAZZ FESTIVAL!!!! It's a really great festival you should see at least once in your lifetime. I'm just sorry I couldn't be there for the whole week when I saw who was there. Definitely worthwhile.

Here are some information I think you might find useful:
Umbria Jazz Festival
Hostel in Perugia
Sonny Rollins