Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins featuring the Eric Alexander Quintet with special guest Nicholas Payton
About This Event
The Eric Alexander Quintet, with special guest trumpeter Nicholas Payton, presents a tribute to tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club. Payton, a New Orleans–raised, Grammy-winning musician and public writer whose playing favors direct melodic argument and a focus on time and tone, brings a mix of straight-ahead jazz and broader American song forms that speaks to Rollins’s influence.
About Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins
At Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, the Eric Alexander Quintet teams with special guest trumpeter Nicholas Payton for a set dedicated to Sonny Rollins, the Harlem-born tenor saxophonist whose long lines and rhythmic logic helped define modern jazz. The program follows Rollins’s repertoire and approach, treating familiar themes as material for argument rather than display. Payton brings a New Orleans sensibility and a writer’s ear for phrasing and time. In a city where Rollins’s story is part of the street map, the tribute reads as local history in performance.
About the Artists
Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins featuring the Eric Alexander Quintet
Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins featuring the Eric Alexander Quintet is a New York City club program built around the music and method of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Centered at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, the Eric Alexander Quintet is joined by special guest trumpeter Nicholas Payton, a New Orleans–raised, Grammy-winning musician known for his writing as well as his bandleading.
special guest Nicholas Payton
Nicholas Payton is a New Orleans–raised jazz trumpeter, Grammy-winning recording artist, and prolific writer on music and culture. In New York City he appears as a special guest at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, joining projects such as *Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins* with the Eric Alexander Quintet.
Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins is a jazz tenor saxophonist whose work sits at the center of bebop and hard bop, shaping the language of modern improvisation. In New York City, his legacy is actively revisited in programs at venues such as The Jazz Gallery and Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, including tributes and repertory evenings led by artists like Jaleel Shaw, Eric Alexander, and Nicholas Payton.
Eric Alexander Quintet
The Eric Alexander Quintet is a jazz group heard in New York City at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club, where it has been presented in programs such as “Celebrating Sonny,” a tribute to tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins.
Nicholas Payton
Nicholas Payton is a New Orleans–raised trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist whose work moves between straight-ahead jazz and broader American song forms. A Grammy Award winner, he is also known as a public writer, using essays and commentary to address music alongside race, politics, and everyday life.