October 30, 2026
Saxophonist Joshua Redman has shared “If Ever I Would Leave You,” the namesake track of his forthcoming Sonny Rollins tribute album, If Ever You Would Leave Us (we play for Rollins), a remarkable paean to the indelible impact of the Saxophone Colossus. The album features 11 inspired selections from Rollins’ repertoire performed in a range of configurations by a nonpareil collective of musicians. The standard “If Ever I Would Leave You,” which was recorded by Rollins on his 1962 album What’s New?, is given a bright, swinging rendition here by a quartet featuring Redman with Rollins band alum Kevin Hays on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums.
When Redman woke up on the day following Rollins’ passing, he felt a cathartic need to do something for Sonny, but he didn’t quite know what. So he started making calls to friends and colleagues, and a loose coterie of great players readily made themselves available for studio sessions in New York that were assembled within a couple weeks. The album also includes contributions from bassist Christian McBride, guitarist Peter Bernstein, tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, and two of jazz’s finest vocalists, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gabrielle Cavassa.
“Sonny’s passing definitely hit me hard,” Redman says. “It felt not unlike the passing of a parent. He certainly felt like a musical father, grandfather and godfather, all rolled into one, for me and I think for all of us.”
It’s difficult to assess Redman’s career and not think of him in one way or another as one of Rollins’ most devoted and accomplished disciples. He is, after all, a prodigious saxophonist who continues to prove that jazz’s “golden age” is always upon us. He exists in a small, elite class of active musicians who can uphold all of modern jazz’s ideals in a single performance: the immaculately contoured improvisations; the room-filling sound, at once mellifluous and diamond-sharp; the gracefully confident bandleading; the impeccably balanced repertoire, which combines probing originals with arrangements of standards that honor both tradition and jazz’s ethic of personalization. It’s no wonder that Redman has long considered Rollins his “number one.”
“He’s my biggest influence as an improviser and as a saxophonist,” Redman says. “He was with us forever — for the totality of my life, and a lifetime before mine. He was somebody who felt like he would never leave us.” And, of course, thanks to Rollins’ abiding influence, he never will.
