Picture: Jordi Vidal/Redferns through Getty Pictures
Sonny Rollins, legendary saxophonist and musical improviser, died on the age of 95, his publicist confirmed on Might 25. “It’s with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins. The Saxophone Colossus died this afternoon at his house in Woodstock, NY on the age of 95,” a submit from his official account wrote. “He’s survived by his nephew Clifton Anderson and his nieces Vallyn Anderson and Gabrielle DeGroat. No public memorial is deliberate at the moment.” The assertion ended with a 2009 quote from Rollins, the place he says, “I feel when the artistic individual ends, he continues within the subsequent existence. I’m an individual who believes this life isn’t the be-all and end-all of the whole lot. A non secular individual doesn’t really feel like that.”
All through his legendary profession, Rollins was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Heart Honors, and a Nationwide Medal of Arts. Whereas his decades-long music profession was appreciated by many, he felt his music was a present to himself, to not the world. He informed Vulture in 2017, “I’m thrilled when anyone tells me that listening to my music offers them some solace or peace, however I performed music for myself, too. I used to be getting one thing out of it. So I don’t contemplate my musical presents as any sort of servitude. It wasn’t giving of myself, as a result of I bought an excessive amount of out of it. I needed to play music. I needed to. It’s one thing I needed to do once I was a baby. That’s like a present to me. It’s not me giving.
It’s with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins. The Saxophone Colossus died this afternoon at his house in Woodstock, NY on the age of 95. 1/2 https://t.co/6AGmFrB7x4 pic.twitter.com/OA0PzpPfGR
— Sonny Rollins (@sonnyrollins) Might 26, 2026
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