Sonny Rollins
Day 67
#13 – Theodore Walter ‘Sonny’ Rollins (b.1930). American jazz tenor saxophonist. Albums include: Saxophone Colossus (1956), Night at the Village Vanguard (1957) and The Bridge (1962).
In 1959 Rollins took a musical sabbatical and started practising for hours a day on Williamsburg Bridge. I started by using the letters to try and create a bridge but it looked boring. He recorded ‘Saxophone Colossus’ in 1956. Typing out ‘Saxophone’ in the most condensed typeface I could find, I noticed the space below the ‘P’, the perfect place to add the word colossus, which was neat and amusing it being so small. But it also suggested to me the idea of this man, playing away at night on the bridge. Adding a blue fade in the background to suggest a sky and a dark blue to suggest the river at a strong angle to compliment the angle of the type finished it off.
1.5 hours
Listen...
to excerpts from ‘Saxophone Colossus’