Matt: RIP Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins, the Saxophone Colossus, has passed. He is probably my favorite saxophonist, and while the aforementioned album is one of the five I would take to a deserted island, he has so many other good ones like The Cutting Edge which also has bagpipes, or Sonny Side Up with Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie.

WordPress 6.7 in November 2024 was named in honor of Rollins.

We rarely choose a living musician for a release so the team actually prepared a gift we sent to him with the names of all the contributors.

Mr. Rollins,
Your immense contributions to music are a source of deep inspiration to the thousands of open source contributors to WordPress. We like to say ‘Code is poetry’, and we’re honored to pay tribute to you and your legacy of creativity and innovation by naming the 6.7 release of WordPress to you.

It was sent to his publicist, so not sure if he got a chance to see it, but I hope it at least gave him a chuckle to have a random Open Source project celebrating him.

He was the last surviving jazzer in the Great Day in Harlem photo.