The recent Rolling Stone piece on jazz legend Sonny Rollins was a great read.


He’s 82 years old now and has lived a true NYC jazz man life.


In particular, I loved his memories of playing with pianist Thelonious Monk.


“I would drop in on him, and we’d talk.  He was 13 yrs older than me, but we had a very similiar way of looking at things,” says Sonny on Monk.


It was Monk who taught him about “the geometry of musical time and space.”  


Sonny often excluded piano from his bands because they played “too many notes in too small a space.”


“Piano players have 88 keys, and they’ve got to play them all; know what I mean,” says Sonny.


“The piano took me to places I didn’t want to go….but Monk kept things open, always gave room.”


Here’s the two of them playing around…