Sonny Rollins

In April this year, the death was announced of the veteran Radio 3 jazz presenter Geoffrey Smith – who hosted Jazz Record Requests for over twenty years. To mark Geoffrey’s death, this week there’s another chance to hear a series of Essays from 2020 in which Geoff, as an American, explored his observations of the British relationship with Jazz.

In 1963 the great tenorist Sonny Rollins provided one of the high points of Geoffrey's jazz life in a gig at the Minor Key in Detroit. Fresh from the famous sabbatical which produced his album The Bridge, he was in towering form. Nearly four decades later, in October 1999, Rollins came to London for a performance at the Barbican just a few days after the fatal rail crash outside Paddington Station. At the start of the concert, he announced he wanted to dedicate it to the people who had died, "in hopes that they are somewhere listening." Then he played with unforgettable power and invention - Rollins at his best, than which there is nothing greater in jazz. And in the succeeding years, every time he returned to the Barbican he produced a concert at that same peerless level, leaving his audience crying for more. Geoffrey Smith reflects on the connection this great American musician forged with his British audience over this series of astonishing performances.