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After a meteoric rise to fame in the 1950s, legendary tenor sax man Sonny Rollins had walked away from it all by the decade's end, embarking on an introspective, almost monastic three-year quest to improve his technique, during which time he would spend up to 16 hours a day playing his sax, alone, on New York City's Williamsburg bridge, and that solitary period of time spent practicing on the bridge is what gives this album its title. Although critical reception to the album was initially mixed, as many had hoped Rollins would have re-emerged from his sabbatical having developed some revolutionary new technique or with a markedly evolved style that differed more strongly from his earlier work, it was nonetheless a commercial success, and has since become regarded as one of his finest albums, even being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. Featuring Rollins in a new quartet that also included Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Ben Riley on the drums, the album has a spare, subdued sound, which might be why the ballads are generally more evocative and memorable than the uptempo numbers, with Rollins' haunting take on the standard "God Bless the Child" being my pick for the standout track, as well as the one that probably best reflects what it must have been like to spend all that time playing alone on that bridge.