Celebrating Sonny: A Tribute to Sonny Rollins New York Performances

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.