Sonny Fortune

Sonny Fortune (2007)

Cornelius Sonny Fortune (born May 19, 1939 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † October 25, 2018 in New York City , New York ) was an American jazz musician ( alto and soprano saxophone , flute ).

Live and act

Fortune studied at the Wurlitzer and Granoo School of Music . He then went on to work with rhythm and blues groups at the local level . In 1967 he went to New York City , where he first played with Elvin Jones . In 1968 he joined the group of Mongo Santamaría for two years before working with the singer Leon Thomas and from 1971 to 1973 with McCoy Tyner . He then worked with Roy Brooks , Buddy Rich and Miles Davis , in whose Get-Up-with-It sessions he participated and with whom he also toured internationally. The live album Pangea was created with Davis in Osaka in 1975 . Fortune has also played with George Benson , Rabih Abou-Khalil , Roy Ayers , Oliver Nelson , Nat Adderley , Barbara Dennerlein and Pharoah Sanders . Since 1975 he has also led his own groups in which, for example, Kirk Lightsey and Kenny Barron played. Fortune died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York at the end of October 2018 at the age of 79 after a series of strokes he suffered in September 2018 .

Fortune was a strong soloist with an outstanding technique and creative vitality, who however never achieved greater fame. According to Ian Carr , he may have played more interesting posts as a sideman than in his own projects.

Discography

Awakening (1975)
Waves of Dreams (1975)
With Sound Reason (1979)
Invitation (1988)
Inside Out (1993)
Four In One (1994)
From Now On (1996)
In the Spirit of John Coltrane (2000)
Continuum (2003)
You And the Night and the Music (2007)

Lexical entries

Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz music. 1700 artists and bands from the beginning until today. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-476-01584-X .
Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Nate Chinen: Sonny Fortune, Stalwart Saxophonist of New York, Dies At 79. In: npr.org . October 27, 2018, accessed October 28, 2018 .
^ Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley, Charles Alexander: The Rough Guide to Jazz , Rough Guides, 2004, p. 266 [1]

personal data
SURNAME	Fortune, Sonny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Fortune, Cornelius Sonny (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American jazz musician (alto and soprano saxophone, flute)
DATE OF BIRTH	May 19, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH	Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA
DATE OF DEATH	October 25, 2018
Place of death	New York City , New York , USA

[npr.org-1] Nate Chinen: Sonny Fortune, Stalwart Saxophonist of New York, Dies At 79. In: npr.org . October 27, 2018, accessed October 28, 2018 .

[2] Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley, Charles Alexander: The Rough Guide to Jazz , Rough Guides, 2004, p. 266 [1]