Jazz’s Sonny Rollins Ready to Retire His Old Attitude

It’s often said that the only constant in life is change, a saw that draws no argument from saxophonist Sonny Rollins.

For five years, Rollins, 61, has been telling people that he had to “harbor his energies, not work so hard.” As a result, the musician--who had twice before taken lengthy hiatuses from performing, for personal reasons, not matters of health--was limiting his appearances to about 60 a year.

He even told The Times last year, “I’m turning down more work than I’m taking.”

But now, the jazz great who plays tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on a bill with guitarist Mark Whitfield has decided it’s time to retire last year’s attitude: He’s ready to expand his schedule.

“I’m rethinking my methods, and I feel I’m taking too much time off. I need to work more,” he said. “I did what I did, working less for my health and sanity, and now I’m entering another phase.”

The impetus for this turnaround was the recording of “Falling in Love With Jazz,” his latest album for Milestone Records.

The sessions, which feature new trumpet sensation Roy Hargrove, drummers Jack DeJohnette and Al Foster and piano master Tommy Flanagan, took place on consecutive Saturdays last month at a New York recording studio.

And while he found that things “eventually jelled and turned out OK,” Rollins said that when the tape started rolling, he found himself less prepared than he would have liked.

The horn master, regarded for decades by fans and critics alike as one of the most compelling improvisers in mainstream jazz, said he felt out of shape because he’d made no appearances during June and July.

“I kept up my usual practice regimen, about four hours a day, but that’s a lot different than playing for people,” he said during a recent phone interview.

“So I’ve noticed this feeling, of not being as sharp as I wanted, and so I thought it’s just a natural cycle. It’s time to play more.”

Rollins does plan to still limit his performances--”I’m not going to take everything that’s offered”--and said he would stick to venues similar to the ones that make up his brief Southern California tour. That means large nightclubs such as the Strand in Redondo Beach, where he played Thursday, and concert halls, such as the Performing Arts Center.

He was adamant that he would not return to smaller jazz clubs that call for three- to six-night stints, with two to three performances a night. He may have been able to handle that kind of rigorous schedule in his 20s, 30s and 40s, he said, but no longer.

“Those days of working a place like the Village Vanguard (in New York City) are gone forever,” he said. “It’s too demanding. I play too hard, give too much of myself so that after a couple of nights I’m exhausted. And I wouldn’t want to hold back so that I could do it. . . .

“It’s a physical act, you have to produce the music. You can know all the music there is, but if you’re an instrumentalist, you have to put it together and get the music out of your horn. You have to be in physical condition. People come up to me and say, ‘Where do you get all that energy?’ They make it sound easy. It’s really a challenge to keep doing it.”

Born Theodore Rollins in New York City in 1931--he got the nickname “Sonny” from an uncle--he began playing saxophone at age 15. By 19, he was recording with such be-bop giants as pianist Bud Powell and trombonist J.J. Johnson, appearing on their debut recordings for Blue Note and Savoy Records, respectively.

He worked briefly with Miles Davis, then, in the early ‘50s, became a leader and has remained one ever since--except for a short tour of duty under the aegis of innovative pianist-composer Thelonious Monk.

When he was in his late 20s, he recorded two albums now considered masterpieces: “Saxophone Colossus” for Prestige Records and “Live at the Village Vanguard” for Blue Note Records. Those albums, and more than 50 that followed, have borne out his reputation as a consummate improviser.

That doesn’t mean, though, that the Rollins of today is the same Rollins of the ‘50s. In the mid- to late ‘70s, Rollins began to add funk- and pop-flavored tunes to his repertoire of standards and be-bop tunes and started touring with electric piano, bass and guitar, where in the past his units had been all acoustic.

This instrumentation, and the addition of more contemporary material, led him to play in a more direct, less complicated manner. He took to repeating the melodies of tunes over and over, and often offered tunes bolstered by rock-like backbeats, or the calypso meters that reflect his Caribbean heritage.

For all that, however, the saxophonist himself doesn’t see that much of a difference between the old and the new Sonny.

“What I’m playing today encompasses everything I’ve done. To me, it’s all me,” he said. “I think I’m basically a rhythm player and there’s a lot of rhythm in the backbeat of today, and I find that exhilarating. If I can use that beat within the context of improvisation, then that’s what it’s all about.”

Rollins’ chief goal is maintaining the reputation he’s established.

“Jazz is a ‘today’ business. It’s not based on nostalgia, on what you did 20 years ago, so I want to improve my playing or, at the very least, keep up the level I’ve attained,” he said. “This goal is never-ending, struggling not to go backwards. I want new heights, sure, but the most important thing is to not go backwards.”

While Rollins rarely seems to disappoint audiences, he has been tough on himself, and often has expressed displeasure with a particular performance or recording.

Of one late-’50s concert in Germany, he recalled, “I was in Berlin, and on the day of the concert, I took my horn apart, something I am not noted for doing. It was foolhardy, but when you’re young, you do a lot of foolhardy things. So there I was, in my room, trying to put it back together and when you haven’t done it, it’s very hard. But I got it back together.”

Sort of. Ultimately, the horn didn’t play well.

Neither did Rollins.

“The concert was dreadful,” he said. “It was a disaster.”

These days, he’s more temperate with self-assessments, saying that both his recordings and his live performances “are more consistent than in the ‘60s or ‘70s.”

Still, he seeks those nights when everything falls right into place.

“Perfection’s a little elusive,” he said, chuckling. “Still, if you experience it, you want to get there again. And it’s happened to me at different times during my career, with different people.”

Asked to recall one such incident, Rollins cites a date, also in Germany, in the ‘60s.

‘I was traveling with (trumpeter) Don Cherry, (drummer) Billy Higgins and (bassist) Henry Grimes, and we had no road manager so we had to do everything ourselves,” he said.

“We were on our way to Dusseldorf, and we had to ask directions to the train station and barely made the train, and it was a mess,” he said. “But that night, we played the best concert on the tour. Everything was really happening. Everybody seemed to sense what everyone else was doing before they did it. And in my playing, things just came out effortlessly, I didn’t have to try. It’s what I strive for, where I don’t have to think, because thinking impedes creativity.”

As much as he wishes he could, there’s one thing Rollins cannot change: the unpredictability of magic nights like those in Dusseldorf.

“That’s the mystery of music,” he said. “That’s why music is more than a science. Sure, it’s an exact science, but there’s something else that transcends it.”

Sonny Rollins and Mark Whitfield appear at 8 p.m. tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $12 to $34. Information: (714) 556-2787.