Jazz has lost one of its last towering architects.

Sonny Rollins, the Harlem-born saxophonist whose fearless improvisation helped define modern jazz, died Monday, May 25, at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95. His publicist, Terri Hinte, confirmed the news, though no immediate cause of death was announced. Rollins had retired from performing in 2014 after dealing with pulmonary fibrosis.

Born Walter Theodore Rollins in Harlem on Sept. 7, 1930, Rollins grew up in a city alive with jazz, bebop and Black musical innovation. By his teenage years, he was already playing alongside Thelonious Monk. He later worked with some of the biggest names in jazz history, including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Max Roach and John Coltrane.

Rollins became known as the “Saxophone Colossus,” a nickname tied to his landmark 1956 album of the same name. The project helped cement him as one of jazz’s greatest improvisers, with “St. Thomas” becoming one of his most recognizable compositions. His catalog also includes standards like “Oleo,” “Doxy” and “Airegin,” songs that remain essential to the jazz canon.

What separated Rollins from many of his peers was not just technical brilliance. It was his restlessness. At the height of his fame, he stepped away from the spotlight and spent long nights practicing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. That period of self-imposed exile became part of jazz folklore and later inspired his 1962 comeback album, The Bridge.

Rollins also used his music to speak directly to race, identity and freedom in America. His 1958 album Freedom Suite confronted the country’s treatment of Black Americans during the Civil Rights era, making clear that jazz was never just sound. In Rollins’ hands, it became memory, protest and spiritual searching.

Across his career, Rollins recorded more than 60 albums as a leader and continued to experiment with sound, form and feeling. His influence reached beyond jazz as well, including a collaboration with The Rolling Stones. Still, his deepest legacy remains inside the language of jazz itself, where generations of saxophonists learned from his tone, phrasing and fearless approach to improvisation.