SONNY ROLLINS
7 p.m., Walton Arts Center. $35-$75.
If you’re prone, as I am, to making actuarial judgments about performers before you, say, drive three hours to see a concert, let me help you along. They don’t get any more last-of-a-dying-breed than this. There are no other jazz performers from the era of Miles and Monk, Coleman Hawkins and Don Cherry still around. In fact, it’s hard to think of an artist, of such established genius, with a longer active career. Sonny Rollins, widely considered the greatest jazz saxophonist ever, is 88, but still blowing strong and still committed to improvisation. Not long ago he told a Catalan magazine, “I am convinced that all art has the desire to leave the ordinary. … But jazz, the world of improvisation, is perhaps the highest, because we do not have the opportunity to make changes.” His stop in Fayetteville, his first in the Ozarks, marks his first stage performance of the year.