Kevin Whitehead

An improviser well-versed in modern jazz, Houle often works with international collaborators in all sorts of settings. His latest album features music from a half-Canadian, half-American quartet.

Rollins recorded his first sessions in 1949, and played his last live shows in 2012. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation, then we listen back to a 1994 interview with the tenor saxophonist.

More blues singer than Broadway, the Bird helped introduce bebop to jazz — and along the way redefined jazz velocity with his scrappy sound and pithy melodic figures.