With the last entry in our month-long Summer Music Festival, we take a trip to ‘60s New York where a titan of jazz practices his sax solos at odd times and in unexpected places.  

In his snapshot of the famed saxophonist Sonny Rollins—taken at a moment of deep introspection in which he self-exiled from his audience in protest against the Vietnam War and worked on his watershed album The Bridge—the innovative British documentarian Dick Fontaine follows the enigmatic musician around New York as he reflects on his artistic process and discusses why he suddenly left the music scene. Rollins—who went from teen prodigy to world famous saxophonist in the span of a decade—speaks in a pensive tone throughout the film, affirming his love of jazz through philosophical remarks and earnest reflection.

Rollins often paused his career to rethink and refine his sound. Who Is Sonny Rollins? reveals just how important these respites were in providing him with the time and space necessary to develop compositions that went against the norms of the music industry at the time. Rollins’s maverick spirit, much like Fontaine’s within his own documentary tradition, is indicative of a willingness to think beyond commercial pressures and social expectations in favor of mental wellness and sonic experimentation.

“I’ve always been fascinated in Sonny because he was one of those people who is capable of saying no to what he was supposed to do. By doing that, he has carved out his own space, and he’s won the game, in the sense that he’s survived, which many of his colleagues did not.” DICK FONTAINE

The aura of reclusion that has always surrounded Rollins is part of what makes Fontaine’s documentary such a delight. After all, it’s a very different experience to read about Rollins’s marathon training sessions on the Williamsburg Bridge than it is to actually see him calmly playing his saxophone on it (Richard Leiterman, the film’s cinematographer, eventually worked with Frederick Wiseman, Allan King, and D.A. Pennebaker). Fontaine’s indelible images are reminders of the fact that, however sporadic Rollins’s contributions to music were, they always left a lasting impression.

Dick Fontaine was born in London, UK, in 1939. He attended Cambridge University, where he studied Moral Sciences. In 1962, he joined Granada Television and helped found their World in Action series—a current-affairs program that became known for its unorthodox blend of filmmaking and reporting. His unrivaled ability to predict cultural turning-points and up-and-coming artists led him to film Alec Douglas-Home’s controversial election to Parliament in 1964, Norman Mailer’s arrest at the Pentagon in 1967, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and the Beatles before Beatlemania. His spur-of-the-moment reporting and graceful cinematic touch cemented him as a pioneering figure of cinema vérité in the UK. 

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Michael Chaiken and Smokey Fontaine. 

Learn more about the work of Dick Fontaine—including the historic 4K re-release of I Heard It Through The Grapevine with James Baldwin, made with producer/director Pat Hartley—here.