Aidan Levy | Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins

Recorded January 17, 2023
In conversation with Nate Chinen
The author of Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters, Aiden Levy played the baritone saxophone in the Stan Rubin Orchestra for 10 years. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and JazzTimes, among other publications. Formerly a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, works with the Center for Jazz Studies, and was a co-convener of the African American Studies Colloquium. In Saxophone Colossus, Levy offers the first full-length biography of Sonny Rollins, one of jazz’s most celebrated but enigmatic musicians and composers.
WRTI jazz radio’s editorial director, a regular contributor to NPR Music, and a consulting producer with Jazz Night in America, Nate Chinen formerly worked as a critic for The New York Times and wrote a long-running column for JazzTimes. He is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, GQ, and Billboard. A 13-time winner of the Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, Chinen has also had his work widely anthologized.
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