Bellarosa – Elmo Hope & Sonny Rollins

An imaginative pianist who valued subtlety over virtuosity in the landscape of bebop, Elmo Hope never achieved the fame that his close friends did, perhaps because he so rejected stylistic norms of the time. Elmo was a classically trained pianist with technique rivaling that of his childhood friend Bud Powell and a composer of music whose inventiveness and complexity approaches that of Thelonious Monk. In fact, Elmo, Thelonious and Bud used to hang out so much together in the late 1940s they became known as "The Three Musketeers." Powell, in Francis Paudras' book "Dance of the Infidels" is quoted as saying, "You gotta hear Elmo. He's fabulous. His stuff is very hard. He does some things that even I have trouble playing." Read more...

Tenor saxophone legend Sonny Rollins is without question one of the most important and influential jazz musicians and composers in history. His enduring career has made him both a hallmark of the bebop and hardbop eras and a great contemporary player—and a forefront of every jazz movement in between. Miles Davis himself considered Newk (a nickname inspired by his resemblance to the Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe) to be the greatest tenor saxophonist of all time. Read more...