JAZZ REVIEW : Sonny Rollins Leads Sonic Assault on Redondo Beach

“I can feel my hearing going,” said one respected saxophonist in the audience at the Strand in Redondo Beach, where tenor-sax veteran Sonny Rollins was providing an assault on 500 pairs of eardrums.

Rollins, one of the giants of jazz in the 1950s and ‘60s, has evolved into an ear-piercing musical jokester who seems to delight in putting on unsophisticated audiences. It took him an hour Thursday to get through three tunes, including “Why Was I Born,” for which he was the sole soloist, plowing through a dozen choruses and “Duke of Iron,” one of his calypso themes.

Ten minutes into “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Rollins embarked on an endless series of unaccompanied, unrelated, stream-of-self-consciousness quotations, tossing in everything from “Oh Susannah” and “On Top of Old Smokey” to “Le Marseillaise.” Using a sound enhancer (if that is the word for it) attached to his horn, he displayed no dynamic contrasts whatsoever.

Electronics having been so significant in musical circles during the last two or three decades, it is sad to find it abused in this manner, doubly so when the abuser is an artist of Rollins’ stature.

His band includes such superior soloists as Clifton Anderson on trombone, Mark Soxkin on piano and Jerome Harris on guitar, but their solos did not quite atone for the overkill and over-comic indulgences of their leader.

Those equipped with ear plugs are advised that Rollins may be heard this evening at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (and possibly for miles around).