Wednesday, August 26, 2026

IN TRIBUTE TO AND CELEBRATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE, ART, AND LEGACY OF WAYNE SHORTER (August 25,1933--March 2, 2023)

 
FROM THE SOUND PROJECTIONS ARCHIVES
 
(Originally posted on January 17, 2015):
 
Saturday, January 17, 2015
 
WAYNE SHORTER (b. August 25, 1933): Legendary, Iconic, and Innovative Tenor and Soprano Saxophonist, Composer, Arranger, Ensemble Leader, Producer, and Teacher
 

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2015

VOLUME ONE NUMBER ONE

MILES DAVIS

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

ANTHONY BRAXTON
November 1-7

CECIL TAYLOR
November 8-14

STEVIE WONDER
November 15-21

JIMI HENDRIX
November 22-28

GERI ALLEN
November 29-December 5

HERBIE HANCOCK
December 6-12

SONNY ROLLINS
December 13-19

JANELLE MONÀE
December 20-26

GARY CLARK, JR.
December 27-January 2

NINA SIMONE
January 3-January 9

ORNETTE COLEMAN
January 10-January 16

WAYNE SHORTER
January 17-23

*[Special bonus feature: A celebration of the centennial year of musician, composer, orchestra leader, and philosopher SUN RA, 1914-1993]
January 24-30 
 
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
 
(Originally  posted on August 25, 2013):
 
Sunday, August 25, 2013 
 
It's Time To Celebrate the Life and Work of a GIANT in Our Midst: Today Marks the 80th Birthday of Legendary Musician and Composer Wayne Shorter

WAYNE SHORTER IN 1964

All, 
 
First, full disclosure: I am a flatout Wayne Shorter fanatic and a shamelessly devoted acolyte of him and his glorious music and have been for well over 40 years now. Widely considered by many musicians, composers, fans, and critics throughout the globe as one of the most captivating, significant, and downright inspiring artists of our time, Mr. Shorter has been active professionally for over six decades and has been recording since 1957. An absolutely essential and leading member of two of the most extraordinary ensembles in modern Jazz history Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (of which he was the major composer and musical director from 1959-1964) and Miles Davis's legendary "second great quintet" for which Wayne played and composed from 1964-1970, Shorter not only led and recorded with many outstanding groups of his own but also went on to be the cofounder with pianist/composer Joe Zawinul of the very popular Jazz fusion ensemble Weather Report (1971-1985). Since then Shorter has continued over the past 30 years to display his masterly and virtuosic talents in a wide range of musical styles and genres and has been a mentor and major influence for an entire generation of musicians and composers throughout the world. In loving tribute to this living legend whose music as both multi-instrumentalist and composer alike is as strong or stronger today as it has ever been (please see and hear his stunning critically acclaimed and bestselling 2013 recording "Without A Net" on the famed Blue Note label for the wonderful evidence of that fact), click on, check out and enjoy listening to and watching Wayne and his equally legendary colleagues in the following video links to a wide range of Shorter's music since the early 1960s...LONG LIVE THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC...
 
Kofi
 

PHOTO:  Erin Baiano for The New York Times
The Wayne Shorter Quartet, with Danilo Pérez on piano, Mr. Shorter on saxophone, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums, performing at Lincoln Center.


Alejandro Bolivar/European Pressphoto Agency
Wayne Shorter at a festival in January 2013


http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2013/02/wayne-shorter-living-legacy-of-great.html

FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on February 9, 2013):

Saturday, February 9, 2013
 
Wayne Shorter: The Living Legacy of a Great Musician, Composer, and Philosopher

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/arts/music/wayne-shorters-new-album-is-without-a-net.html?ref=arts&_r=0&pagewanted=all

"I knew Wayne Shorter first in Newark where we were both, malevolently, born. He was one of the two "weird" Shorter brothers that people mentioned occasionally, usually as a metaphorical reference, "...as weird as Wayne.” --Leroi Jones, "Introducing Wayne Shorter", Jazz Review magazine, 1959

“We have to beware the trapdoors of the self. You think you’re the only one that has a mission, and your mission is so unique, and you expound this missionary process over and over again with something you call a vocabulary, which in itself becomes old and decrepit.”
--Wayne Shorter, 2013
 
All,

A Great Artist. A Great Musician. A Great Composer. A Great Human Being (And a Bad Muthafucka!). My eternal goal remains to be fortunate enough to become "as weird as Wayne"...

Kofi


PHOTO: Robert Yager for The New York Times Wayne Shorter, the saxophonist and composer, is nearly 80 and remains driven and influential.

Major Jazz Eminence, Little Grise Wayne Shorter’s New Album Is ‘Without a Net’ 
by NATE CHINEN
January 31, 2013
New York Times 
 
THE STANDARD LINE on Wayne Shorter is that he’s the greatest living composer in jazz, and one of its greatest saxophonists. He would like you to forget all of that. Not the music, or his relationship to it, but rather the whole notion of pre-eminence, with its granite countenance and fixed coordinates. “We have to beware the trapdoors of the self,” he said recently.

“You think you’re the only one that has a mission,” he went on, “and your mission is so unique, and you expound this missionary process over and over again with something you call a vocabulary, which in itself becomes old and decrepit.” He laughed sharply.

Mr. Shorter will turn 80 this year. Decrepitude hasn’t had a chance to catch up to him. Last week he appeared at Carnegie Hall as a featured guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which played several of his compositions. On Tuesday “Without a Net,” easily the year’s most anticipated jazz album, will become his first release on Blue Note in more than four decades. And next Saturday he’ll be at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the premiere of “Gaia,” which he wrote as a showcase for the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding.

He hasn’t accrued this late-inning momentum alone. The vehicle for most of Mr. Shorter’s recent activity, including the orchestral work, is his superlative quartet with Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums. A band of spellbinding intuition, with an absolute commitment to the spirit of discovery, it has had an incalculable influence on the practice of jazz in the 21st century — and not necessarily for the same reasons that established Mr. Shorter’s legend in the 20th.

Since the emergence of the quartet, which released its first album on Verve in 2002, jazz’s aesthetic center has moved perceptibly: away from the hotshot soloist and toward a more collectivist, band-driven ideal. There has also been an unusual amount of dialogue between jazz’s tradition-minded base camp and its expeditionary outposts, where conventions exist to be challenged.

Mr. Shorter’s working band is far from the only one to embody these principles during the past decade, but it has been the most acclaimed and widely heard. Traces of its style can be detected in other groups, including those led by the saxophonist Chris Potter and the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Its slippery methodology has also taken root in the conservatory, and not just at the Berklee College of Music, where Mr. Pérez is on the faculty, or at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, where Mr. Shorter is a resident guru.

“The students are very familiar with that quartet,” said Doug Weiss, who teaches a popular Wayne Shorter ensemble class at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. “They come in having heard the way that band plays together, and a lot of them have no idea what’s going on, and that’s why they’re there.”

So in addition to Mr. Shorter’s body of work — his terse and insinuative compositions, which have been closely studied by jazz musicians for decades — this newer generation has also had the opportunity to grapple with his elusive philosophy of play.

Once, in an interview, Mr. Shorter was asked to account for his pursuit of music above other art forms. He replied that music has an inherent sense of velocity and mystery. It would be hard to find a more concise distillation of his priorities as a bandleader.

“When we go out onstage we always start from nothing,” said Mr. Patitucci by phone from Mr. Pérez’s native Panama, where the quartet headlined a jazz festival last month. “So anybody can spin the wheels in a certain direction, and then we develop those themes.”

What follows isn’t free jazz, exactly, though it uses some of the same tools. “It’s spontaneous composition,” Mr. Patitucci said, “with counterpoint and harmony and lyricism. All of those values are still there. It’s just being pressurized into milliseconds.”

Mr. Shorter framed the idea as an image: “We don’t count how much water there is in a wave when we see the ocean.” He was on the couch of a hotel suite overlooking Central Park South, during one of his recent visits from Los Angeles, where he lives. That evening he would perform at a gala for the David Lynch Foundation, along with the pianist Herbie Hancock, his former partner in the Miles Davis Quintet. He wore dress loafers and a fleece pullover embroidered with the logo of Soka Gakkai International, the Nichiren Buddhist organization to which he and Mr. Hancock belong.

A scheduled interview began with an unscheduled interruption: Ms. Spalding — who won the Grammy for best new artist in 2011, and was also booked at the gala — dropped by with the Argentine pianist Leo Genovese. For all of her success Ms. Spalding still belongs to the demographic that grew up with the notion of Wayne as sage: she and Mr. Genovese were there simply to give him a hug.

Mr. Shorter is a notoriously elliptical conversationalist, prone to cosmic digression and quick-fire allusion. During a spirited two-hour interview he touched on modern art, social politics and science fiction — among the books he produced for inspection was the dystopian “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline — as well as music and movies, and movie music. “I’m looking at a lot of old silent films now,” he said, “and I listen to the new, hip boy bands. I was checking out some Selena Gomez.” On the subject of jazz, he said pithily, “The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’ ”

But he also painted his own jazz narrative in precise strokes, whether it was hearing Charlie Parker at Birdland at the age of 18 — what stuck with him was a quotation of “Petrushka,” the Stravinsky ballet, that Parker sneaked into one solo — or sensing the mortal urgency that burned in John Coltrane, his fellow saxophonist, and in some ways a mentor. And Mr. Shorter made several references to the cryptic wisdom of Miles Davis, slipping each time into an unusually convincing imitation of that trumpeter’s throaty rasp.

Davis’s celebrated quintet of the mid-’60s was one of the most aerodynamically advanced in the history of jazz, and apart from Davis himself Mr. Shorter was its chief in-house designer. One of his signature contributions was “Nefertiti,” a slithery 16-bar tune ambiguously shaded with altered and half-diminished chords.

On record, as the title track to a 1968 album, the song features Davis and Mr. Shorter tracing and retracing its melody while the rhythm section improvises in the background, with all the supple intrigue of a shadow creeping across the landscape. It’s a useful precedent for Mr. Shorter’s current band, which derives much of its dynamism from rhythm-section cohesion within the loosest possible framework.

Another precedent, less obvious, is the transitional band that Davis led before his swerve into jazz-funk, a quintet with Mr. Shorter, the pianist Chick Corea, the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. A boxed set released last week on Columbia/Legacy, “Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2,” illuminates just how much liberty that group took with its materials, even to the point of feverish abstraction. It never sounds freer than on a concert in Stockholm, attacking three of Mr. Shorter’s compositions: “Paraphernalia,” “Nefertiti” and “Masqualero.”

Two of those have surfaced on Mr. Shorter’s recent albums with the quartet, along with other pieces from a broad swath of his career. “Without a Net,” a compilation of live recordings from 2011, opens with “Orbits,” a theme from the Davis quintet era. It also includes a majestic take on “Plaza Real,” from the songbook of Weather Report, the epochal ’70s fusion band that Mr. Shorter led with Joe Zawinul.

But the provenance of the music takes a back seat to its process, which Mr. Shorter said was meant to herald an ideal of self-actualized communal leadership. “This kind of stuff I’m talking about is a challenge to play onstage,” he allowed, and chuckled. “When Miles would hear someone talking about something philosophical, he would say” — here came the rasp — “ ‘Well, why don’t you go out there and play that?’ One thing we talk about is that to ‘play that’ we have to maybe play music that doesn’t sound like music.” 

If that sounds like a Zen riddle, comfort yourself with the knowledge that even Mr. Shorter’s band mates have had to warm to the uncertainty. “It was scary, to be honest,” Mr. Pérez said of his early experience in the quartet. “It was a shock to put myself into a situation where I had no idea what was happening. Even when I listened back, I felt like an outsider: ‘What is that? What key are we in?’ ” He gradually made adjustments, including one to his practice regimen: for two or three hours at a stretch he would watch Tom and Jerry cartoons with the sound muted, making up a score.

The band hasn’t relaxed its pursuit of revelation, which expresses itself in myriad ways: Mr. Pérez’s on-the-fly cadenzas, the unexpected thunderclap of Mr. Blade’s crash cymbal, the dartlike insistence of Mr. Shorter’s improvisational flights. All this remains true even as Mr. Shorter steps up his output as a composer. “He’ll bring in this 10-page piece of music, and it’s gorgeous,” Mr. Patitucci said. “And he’ll say, ‘Just this 16 bars.’ He’s not even attached to what he wrote.”

The center of gravity on “Without a Net” is “Pegasus,” designed to feature Imani Winds, a classical wind ensemble. Through much of that track’s 23 minutes, the woodwinds deftly frame the dramatic fluctuations of Mr. Shorter’s band; at times the two factions achieve a compelling synthesis, advancing a dramatic theme.

It’s horizon-scanning music, but it also features glimpses of the past, like the fanfare from “Witch Hunt,” which led off Mr. Shorter’s landmark 1965 Blue Note album “Speak No Evil.” During his solo in “Pegasus” Mr. Shorter also nods to the old Sonny Rollins tune “Oleo.” Elsewhere on the new album he drops a quotation of the Afro-Cuban bebop standard “Manteca,” and leads the band through a cubist recasting of “Flying Down to Rio,” a movie theme originally sung by Fred Astaire. 
 
“To me there’s no such thing as beginning or end,” Mr. Shorter said. “I always say don’t discard the past completely because you have to bring with you the most valuable elements of experience, to be sort of like a flashlight. A flashlight into the unknown.” 


Posted by Kofi Natambu at 2:50 AM 
 
Labels: African American music, Improvisation, Jazz composition, Jazz history, social philosophy, Wayne Shorter

 


 


The Music of Wayne Shorter
by Bruno Råberg

Copyright © 1995 

Wayne Shorter is one of the musical geniuses of this century. He ranks among Ellington, Parker, Monk and Coltrane both as an improviser and as a composer. His influence on several generations of musicians is evident and speaks for itself. For nearly three decades he has been a prolific composer, always developing and working with new concepts and ideas. Like Miles Davis he has refused to stagnate and has had the ability to leave music that he loves behind in order to develop and explore. As a saxophonist he has it all, from the relentless swinging tenor with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers to the lyrical and romantic soprano saxophone on many later recordings. He has during his career always belonged to the foremost and ground-breaking bands at the time: Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, the legendary Miles Davis Quintet, the late 60's Miles Davis, Weather Report and currently his own Wayne Shorter Group. His own current group is one of the most successful and sought after acts on the jazz scene today.

Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 26, 1933. His first creative sparks were not shown in music but in painting and sculpting. He was admitted to the Newark Arts High School and did not start to study music until he was 16. He was given a clarinet from his grandmother and started taking lessons with a local band leader. Soon he was to be exposed to the great jazz masters of the time. He went to hear performances by such acts as Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker and just about everybody else that was on the scene at the time. After falling in love with this music he then got a tenor saxophone, switched to the music major during the last year of high school and started a band that he called The Group. He was now completely immersed in transcribing arrangements and compositions, especially from the bands that Dizzy Gillespie led at the time. He claims that the broad range he now has on his soprano comes from playing trumpet parts on his clarinet.

After graduation with honors in music and art from Newark Arts High School, he enrolled at New York University, majoring in music education. During these four years he started to do gigs around New York, sitting in at jam sessions at Birdland and all the jazz clubs that were blooming at the time. Just as he was about to get recognition he was drafted into the Army. He played with the Army band in Washington D.C. and during his stay there played a couple of concerts with Horace Silver's band. After leaving the army things really started to take off for Shorter. One of the most important experiences of Shorter's musical life was about to take place, namely his relationship with John Coltrane. They would practice and jam together, sharing conceptual ideas and even playing gigs together. Coltrane had heard about Shorter and was very exited about his playing, especially since he could relate to the way Shorter was trying new concepts and also stretching the limits of the tenor sax. Coltrane supposedly had said to Shorter that he liked the way he was "scrambling them eggs" referring to Shorter's highly imaginative sheets of sound. They both were practicing from violin and harp etude books in order to play wider leaps and intervals and these wide intervals became one of the trade marks of Shorter's improvisations and compositions. It was around this time Coltrane wrote Giant Steps using a tri-tonic system to break away from the be-bop and standard type of changes. One can hear how Shorter emulated this, and one can hear some clear evidence of Giant Steps soloing patterns in his solo on his composition E.S.P., from the 1964 Miles Davis Quintet album with the same name. Coltrane's influence on the overall mood is also obvious on most of the Blue Note recordings that Shorter did as a leader. Shorter also used Coltrane's rhythm sections or at least part of them on these recordings. The 26-year-old Shorter played with Coltrane one memorable night in December 1958, at Birdland. Among the other musicians were Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton and Elvin Jones. Cannonball and Nat Adderly's band were playing opposite Coltrane's band. Shorter says about this gig,"We had a rehearsal at his house, and that night we were playing. Opposite us were Cannonball with his brother Nat. Cannonball and Trane were working with Miles then, but they had time off and they split up and got different bands. Elvin Jones was on drums that night. It was historic; everybody realized it- we tore that place up. Ten years later when I went to California, people were still talking about it.- 'Yeah we heard about it out here, that memorable Monday night at Birdland.' That's when Trane started playing all the new stuff he had written. It was a new wave. 1"Shorter has said about his practicing during this time, "I used to practice about 6 hours a day, play the first thing that came into my head, which was always harder than a regular exercise.”2

In 1959 Coltrane was about to leave Miles Davis' band and had been wanting to for a while. He told Shorter if he wanted to do it it was all his. Shorter called Davis only to get the response of "If I need a tenor player I'll get one." Obviously Davis did not know that Coltrane was about to leave his group, and next time he saw Coltrane he told him, "Don't be telling nobody to call me like that, and if you want to quit then just quit, but why don't you do it after we get back from Europe?"3 Instead Shorter joined Maynard Ferguson's band for a short stint. This was upon recommendation of pianist Joe Zawinul. Zawinul and Shorter were at this time socializing a lot but did not play together other than with Ferguson' band. It would take another 10 years before they started their collaboration in Weather Report. After sitting in one night with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers Shorter was offered the gig and joined them for a 5 year stint. After being with Blakey for a short while he was offered the gig with Miles Davis but opted to stay with the Jazz Messengers.

Together with Lee Morgan, Shorter formed one of the most formidable front lines at the time. The Messengers was a hard- swinging band driven by the propulsive, down to earth drummer Art Blakey. Even though the music became too limited for Shorter after a while, there is no doubt that it was here he developed a strong connection to the roots of jazz and built the foundation that allowed him to stretch and experiment later on. Shorter became the musical director and his compositions and arrangements would characterize the sound of the Jazz Messengers for the 5 years he was with them. During his stay with Blakey he also recorded several albums as a leader.

In 1964 Shorter left Art Blakey and spent the summer practicing and composing. Miles Davis returned from a tour of Japan and found out that Shorter had left Art Blakey. He then asked everybody in his band to call Shorter and convince him to join the quintet. And so he did. The first engagement was at the Hollywood Bowl in late 1964. "Getting Wayne made me feel good , because with him I just knew some great music was going to happen. And it did; it happened real soon,"4 Miles says in his autobiography. "If I was the inspiration and wisdom and the link for this band, Tony (Williams) was the fire, the creative spark; Wayne was the idea person, the conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did; Ron (Carter) and Herbie (Hancock) were the anchors."5 Miles also says: "At first Wayne had been know as free-form player, but playing with Art Blakey for those years and being the band's musical director had brought him back in somewhat. He wanted to play freer than he could in Art's band, but he didn't want to be all the way out, either. Wayne has always been someone who experimented with form instead of someone who did it without form. That's why I thought he was perfect for where I wanted to see the music I played go. Wayne also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn't work, then he broke them, but with a musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste. Wayne was out there on his own plane, orbiting around his own planet. Everybody else in the band was walking down here on earth. He couldn't do in Art Blakey's band what he did in mine; he just seemed to bloom as a composer when he was in my band. That's why I say he was the intellectual musical catalyst for the band in his arrangement of his musical compositions that we recorded." 6 Shorter said about playing with Miles: "Everyone noticed a difference, it wasn't bish-bash, sock- em-dead routine we had with Blakey, with every solo a climax. With Miles, I felt like a cello, I felt viola, I felt liquid, dot-dash, and colors started really coming..." 7 This quintet dissolved in 1967-68 because Davis was again trying to break new ground. He brought in a lot of different musicians and a period of experimenting took place. Shorter still appeared on Davis' albums as late as 1969. During his stay with Davis he recorded a substantial amount of records as a leader, most of them on Blue Note. It is interesting to note that the music on these recordings although recorded during the same era as the Davis Quintet are much less experimental and stays closer to the jazz tradition. This is with the exception of Etcetera (1965) and the albums recorded after 1968.

In 1970 Shorter formed Weather Report together with Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous. He had played with both in different constellations during 1968-69, with Davis and in his own formations as a leader. Weather Report was to be at the forefront of the jazz fusion era, breaking new ground for 15 years, and a new unique sound was born. He shared the role as composer with Zawinul on the 15 albums that they recorded. His improvisations became almost minimalistic on some of the recordings, since compositions and group playing was the main focus of the group. His ability to think compositionally while improvising, and to say a lot with a few right notes, still makes his solos very interesting. The freedom to stretch out on longer improvisations is evident on their live album 8:30 recorded in 1979.

In 1985 Weather Report and the collaboration with Zawinul came to an end. Shorter started his own band and recorded Atlantis. This was his first album as leader since Native Dancer, a collaboration with Brazilian singer-composer Milton Nascimento that was recorded in 1974. The music on Atlantis was all through-composed, almost a form of jazz-fusion chamber music. It seemed like this was material that he did not get to record with Weather Report and now, not having to compromise, he got to control every aspect of the music. The writing on this album is very complex and utilizes many different compositional techniques. It also has an interesting blend of acoustic and synthesized instruments in the arrangements. There is hardly any improvisation except for short soloistic statements similar to the Weather Report recordings. As with Weather Report though, the same material is opened up for long improvisations in live performances and contains a lot of group interaction. After Atlantis two more albums were released, Phantom Navigator in 1987 and Joy Ryder in 1989. These are similar in style but have more of a high-tech sound, with sequenced drum and keyboard parts.

The Artist and Philosopher

Some of the words that come to mind when trying to describe Wayne Shorter are: mysterious, intuitive, spontaneous, artistic, imaginative, universal, free, black esthetics, naive, swinging, traditional and unpredictable.

The early curiosity and involvement in painting and sculpting is something that became a part of Shorter's artistry throughout his career. The majority of his tunes have very vivid images that go with them. When talking about his compositions Shorter always mentions a particular feeling or mood that he was thinking about when he was writing a particular tune. Also specific movements, shapes and even stories and science-fiction become the script that the composition is based on. Sometimes it is the overall mood and sometimes there is a very specific and more direct relation. An example of the latter would be the tune Lester Left Town (Art Blakey-The Big Beat) which is about Lester Young. Shorter illustrates the way Lester Young walked with the melody line. Shorter says,"He had a way of walking, and the descending chromatic notes, which have a tempo of their own, pictorialize Lester Young walking at a fast pace." 8 The strong igniting role that these images played is evident when Shorter comments on how certain compositions were conceived. He says about Lester Left Town : " I was sort of thinking about the 40's and I was in my 20's when I wrote it. I was thinking, "Lester Young". The writing just went by itself." 9 Another example of a direct physical image used as inspiration is the tune The Last Silk Hat (Atlantis). This tune was written for Nat "King" Cole and specifically his ambidextrousness at playing the piano and singing at the same time. Saying that these images would serve as inspiration for his composing seems like an understatement. Rather, these images seems to be crucial as the creative spark that sets forth the process of composing and stays closely knit to the final product.

On his pivotal album Speak No Evil , recorded in 1964 for Blue Note, Shorter drew on folklore, black magic and legends. About the collection of compositions on this album Shorter says, "I was thinking of misty landscapes with wild flowers and strange, dimly-seen shapes- the kind of places where folklore and legends are born." He goes on. "I'm getting more stimuli from things outside of my self. Before I was concerned with myself, with my ethnic roots, and so forth. But now, and especially from here on, I'm trying to fan out, to concern myself with the universe instead of just my own corner of it." 10 All the compositions on this album have very specific images in mind. Witch Hunt is about the Salem witch burnings. Fee-fi-fo-fum is inspired by a couplet spoken by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. About Dance Cadaverous Shorter says, " I was thinking of some of these doctor pictures in which you see a classroom and they're getting ready to work on a cadaver." 11 Speak No Evil is the last part of the saying, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil "This piece is about caution, be careful about what you say: What comes out of your mouth can cause some horrendous effects or beautiful ones." 12 says Shorter in the liner notes. Shorter's inspiration can also come from more real life experiences as is the case with Infant Eyes , which is a ballad referring to Shorter's daughter, Miyako. Wildflower is simply an ode to a wild flower.

Despite these statements that suggest a departure from the jazz and other black music traditions, the music on Speak No Evil is still imbued with blues and swinging rhythms. The development here does not mean leaving the roots behind but rather expanding the range of influences and emotions. This is of course crucial for any art form if it is to develop and not stagnate.

As an improviser Shorter never succumbs to patterns and practiced "licks". There are many trademarks and melodic materials that he uses in his writing and improvising, but these are motives that are his own and are used in a very flexible manner. He will use quotes from his own solos from 20 years ago in his playing today, but these melodic motives are so strong that although they were improvised at the time they have become part of the composition. His composer and improviser self are very symbiotic and work closely together. His compositions never become contrived and academic but rather seem to spring out like improvised spontaneous phrases that are left alone to grow on their own as much or little as they want. A good example of this is the classic Nefertiti (Nefertiti , Miles Davis Quintet, 1967) which he claims to have written in less than 3-4 minutes. His improvisations are much the same way, especially after he joined Miles Davis and stepped into his own leaving the hard-bop tenor identity behind. He does not force himself or any preconceived ideas on the music. Instead, he has full confidence in himself as a medium for creativity, and lets the music play through him. He also has the prowess to stick to the essence of the song, and not play music that is far removed from the compositions. One can hear the original melody of the composition following his lines like a shadow. He also takes himself and the musical ideas that come out of his instrument very seriously. Every idea is treated with respect and won't be dismissed and hurriedly buried by another unrelated line. Even in his most erratic flurries of sounds he can at any moment state fragments from the melody. As a listener one can feel the sense of cohesion at all times.

In his later works, Atlantis, Phantom Navigator and Joy Ryder, his interest in science-fiction movies and extraterrestrial phenomena are evident. Shorter says about Flagships from Phantom Navigator, "This piece was actually meant to be cinematic. It's a large field, late evening, a big huge UFO descending and hovering over this field. Two children actually starting out to play and getting entangled in something that is totally alien to them, but at the same time, experiencing, from a listening point of view, something that's warm with excitement." He goes on to say, "I wanted to have this piece of music result in anticipation for the future." 13 Forbidden Plan-iT ! from the same album is also the title of a 50's science-fiction movie, the first movie to use an all electronic sound track. From the same album titles like Condition Red and Remote Control are actual movie titles. "Yamanja was inspired by the Brazilian legend of the goddess of the sea." 14 says Shorter about another title.

The early shorter compositions are stylistically in a typical neo-bop style with 8th note runs in the melody over II-V oriented progressions. There are also many Dom7 passing chords and deceptive resolutions that give them Shorter's distinctive touch. A lot of typical be-bop tunes were written over familiar chord changes from standards. Charlie Parker's Donna Lee was written over the chord changes to Indiana . George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm is another example of a tune that has had hundreds of different melodies written for it. In these cases it was often the familiar harmonic progressions, with logical and clear tonal centers, that gave a composition cohesiveness. The melody could afford to be very flexible and less "catchy" or singable because the harmony provided stability. What Shorter started to do was to have the melody give cohesiveness over unfamiliar, complex, and vagrant harmonic progressions. Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and others had, of course, already started to compose independently of these familiar chord changes. Monk especially had written very complex progressions. In the light of this one can say that Shorter's compositions were not at this point that ahead of their time or by any means revolutionary. What put them in a class by themselves was Shorter's distinctive personal voice that is even today unmistakable. Shorter further developed this on the albums that he recorded as a leader for Blue Note Records. Tunes like Armageddon, Deluge, Speak No Evil, Witch Hunt and Wild Flower have melodies that are very simple. They have none of the complex 8th note runs and melodic twists typical of 50's be-bop. Instead the melodies are very limited in terms of pitch set and the rhythms are spacious and repetitive. Some of the melodies (Armageddon and Deluge ) stick almost exclusively to a minor pentatonic scale. This scale is also the basis for the blues scale and therefore these tunes have a very "bluesy" character. As a contrast to the simple inside melodic part of the tune there is always a bridge, that provides variation and interest enough to make the composition complete. What also provides variation and makes these compositions very different from earlier writing is the harmony. Underneath these quite singable and simple sounding melodies lie very complex harmonic progressions. What we get is a perfect balance between complexity and simple lyricism. Understanding this relation between melody and harmony is also often the key to learning how to improvise over Shorter's tunes. Just like the melody bridges the distance between the chords, one can improvise in a similar linear manner to achieve an organic connection between the chords. A mix of a linear and vertical approach works best, as does of course staying close to the melody. The harmonic progressions break the common written and unwritten rules, and especially the root motion changes its role from providing simple movements in 4'ths and 5'ths to being vagrant and taking very unexpected paths. Due to Shorter's uncanny sense for tension and release, and an obvious knowledge of the basics of harmony, we still feel the organic flow of logical harmonic progressions. One important contributor to this is the fact that Shorter never over-writes, i.e. he has very good sense of when to stop introducing more new music material. Especially since the unfamiliar and often very charged harmonic motions give away so much more information than what regular diatonic progressions would do, it is very important as a composer to be able to "hear" when the "painting" has had the final stroke. In Shorter's writing from this time, and especially through the Miles Davis Quintet period, one can also have a sense that in the composing process the melody and harmony take turns unfolding the composition. As a listener one is equally drawn to listen to the melody at times and to the chords at other times. In Shorter's writing for Miles Davis Quintet there is also an openness inherent in the compositions which allows the rest of the band to fully explore the song with improvisational statements. Herbie Hancock's unmistakable genius at reharmonization and both rhythmic and harmonic embellishment was here at its peak. Tony Williams' propulsive and rhythmic inventiveness was allowed to flourish in the space that was built into the compositions. Shorter's harmony also freed up the bass role and Ron Carter was a master at changing the root of a chord, sometimes staying on a pedal point throughout an extended section and thus making a section having a modal sound. All this took place at the same time as he was providing the band with cohesiveness, swing and rhythmic interest. Miles Davis steered the "ship" and gave it soul, connected it with the past. Above all, he had an explicit sense for when to bring everybody, and the music, back and therefore not allow the "painting" to get blurry. On later recordings, when the same members, without Davis, play the same material with the same concept of interplay, the music takes on a nearly grotesque quality of overplaying. This is of course in comparison with the original setting. What made this whole process possible was the chemistry between the musicians, the deeply rooted sense of collective improvisation stemming back to the African roots of musical and social sensibilities. Although they allowed themselves a lot of individualistic freedom the whole did not suffer because their common firm roots in the jazz tradition held them together.

Major Changes

The two years before Zawinul, Vitous and Shorter started Weather Report, Shorter had been experimenting in the true sense of the word, both with Miles Davis and on his own projects. The years of 1967-70 were a revolutionary time politically, and it showed in the music of the time also. Davis had started mixing in elements from outside the jazz tradition. Elements from rock, funk and rhythm & blues were present. American styles were not the only ones. Indian and African influences were also present. In a sense it was a kind of "world music" 20 years before the term was invented. It made the biggest change within the rhythm sections, where the acoustic bass was replaced by the electric and the typical jazz drummer was replaced by a funk rock drummer. The other big change was the emergence of electronic instruments, electric pianos and synthesizers. When Shorter together with Zawinul and Vitous started Weather Report it was actually a step back "inside" compared with what Shorter had been doing on his previous albums such as Super Nova, Moto Grosso Feio and Odyssey of Iska. All the new ingredients discussed above were present, and added to that were new recording techniques like over-dubbing and "cutting and pasting". Miroslav Vitous once described how he on one of his compositions played chords on the piano but had the engineer not start recording until after the attack thus creating a spacious and not easily identified sound. What was more "inside" now than before was the sense of composed form structures instead of improvised form. The first album Weather Report (recorded in 1971) is the most loosely conceived. Shorter's compositions did not change drastically from his writing for Miles Davis Quintet in the mid 60's. For example, Shorter's Tears from Weather Report (1971), could also have been played by a regular jazz quintet, but is played on this recording with a back beat and a heap of percussion that add additional colors. Since up through 1968 the rhythms were all based on jazz tradition with influences from Latin, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms, the biggest change was maybe not in the harmony, melody or form but rather the way the melodic rhythms and overall feel were tailored.

With the change of rhythm section on their album Mysterious Traveler (in 1974) the band took on a funkier and more groove- oriented character. The rhythm section with roots in black American music styles pulled the band closer to the popular rhythms of the time and thus won big audiences world-wide. Now Shorter's compositions started to change more drastically. Particularly the 16th note rhythms and the back beat from funk and rock were what stood out as being what changed in the compositions. The harmony took on a more modal character with sometimes catch 3-4 chord repetitive vamps. The melodies went from being long floating phrases to short and sometimes catchy statements. Shorter's compositions still kept artistic integrity at the same time as they communicated with a large audience.

The main change in Shorter's compositions after Weather Report, on the albums he released as a leader, is the strong presence of counterpoint. On Atlantis, one can hear the very intricate counterpoint between the bass and melody. This is really the first examples of completely written out bass parts although his awareness of the important relation between bass and melody has been present throughout his career. His composition Joy Ryder, from Joy Ryder, is solely built on two counter lines that interact in a sort of improvised free counterpoint with occasional hints at tonal centers. Not until after the main body of the tune, at the solo section is there a clear sense of tonality and actual chord changes. What has not changed in Shorter's music is his keen sense of melody, explicable taste for harmony, his rhythmic understanding and his own unmistaken voice. As a Coda I will let Shorter speak with his own words, " Life to me is like an art, because life has been created by an artist, the Chief Architect."15

Copyright © Bruno Råberg 1995 

1 Chambers Jack, Milestones, (Quill), p. 303.
2 Third Earth Productions, Wayne Shorter, (Hal Leonard Pub. Corp.), p. 4.
3 Troupe, Quincy , Davis, Miles , Miles the Autobiography, (Touchstone, Simon and Schuster), p 247.
4 Ibid., p.270.
5 Ibid., p.273.
6 Ibid., p. 273.
7 Third Earth Productions, Wayne Shorter, (Hal Leonard Pub. Corp.), p.5.
8 Third Earth Productions, Wayne Shorter, (Hal Leonard Pub. Corp.), p. 47.
9 Ibid., p.47.
10 Heckman,Don, quote from liner notes to Speak No Evil.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Third Earth Productions, Wayne Shorter, (Hal Leonard Pub. Corp.), p. 32.
14 Ibid., p.106.
15 Shorter, Wayne, Creativity and Change, (Down Beat 12/12/68)

Back to Main Wayne page

Copyright© Bruno Råberg 1998

Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity | Jazz Great and Innovator Who Inspired with His Music and Humanity



Factual America Podcast  
 
August 24, 2023 
 
 
Wayne Shorter has long been considered one of the greatest modern composers and musicians of American music. Subscribe for more from Factual America: http://bit.ly/AlamoPictures His career reads like a Who's Who of the genre, starting with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, then the Miles Davis Quintet, followed by solo fame and the founding of fusion super group Weather Report. His collaborations extend beyond jazz greats such as Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter to include Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchel, Milton Nascimento and Steely Dan, just to name a few. In Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, acclaimed producer and director Dorsay Alavi moves beyond typical music doc territory to capture the essence of the man who touched so many lives, including her own. As Shorter's long-time friend and music-video collaborator, Dorsay paints an intimate portrait and cinematic ode to a truly American visionary, innovator and icon. Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity is a three-part docu-series streaming on Amazon Prime from August 25th 2023, which would have been Shorter's 90th birthday. "There's so many layers to Wayne, but I would say mostly, he's a very, very principled person. And I believe that he has always been very authentic and true to what he has always done on an artistic level, [and] in life as well." - Dorsay Alavi 
 
 
What is Covered:
 
00:00 – Matthew Sherwood introduces this episode's guest, Dorsay Alavi, and her film, Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity  
02:49 – Dorsay explains what Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity is about 
05:44 – How Wayne Shorter 'grew to greatness' 09:31 – Dorsay on Wayne Shorter's influence on her, her family, and his high principles  
12:09 – Wayne Shorter's spirituality and elevated spirit 
14:25 – How Dorsay first met Wayne Shorter 16:53 – How the idea for Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity came about and the film's long gestation 18:55 – Dorsay's approach to making the film 20:30 – What it was like working with Wayne 23:08 – Dorsay discusses the type of documentary she wanted to make 
24:06 – Wayne Shorter's inner child  
26:11 – What's next for Dorsay Resources: Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity 
 
 
MovieMaker Magazine 
 
 
Connect with Dorsay Alavi IMDb 
 
LinkedIn / dorsay-alavi-596a23a ▬▬ 
 
FACTUAL AMERICA PODCAST ▬▬ 
 
Factual America uses documentary filmmaking to examine the American experience as well as universal topics that affect all Americans. Guests include leading documentary filmmakers, their subjects, as well as experts on the American experience. Subscribe to Factual America: https://linktr.ee/FactualAmerica 
 
Like us on Facebook / factualamerica Follow us on Instagram: @factual_america Follow us on Twitter: @Factual_America 
 
Connect with Matthew Sherwood: Twitter / sherwood1967 Facebook / matthew.sherwood.14 LinkedIn / matthewsherwood ▬▬ 
 
ABOUT ALAMO PICTURES ▬▬ Alamo Pictures is a production company that makes US documentaries from a European perspective. Our goal is to create US documentaries for an international audience, remaining subjective by looking at American issues from a European point of view. 
 
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March 2, 2023 
 
All,

A GIANT HAS LEFT US.

One of the greatest, relentlessly innovative, awe-inspiring, deeply influential and IMPORTANT artists of the past century in not only this country but the entire globe passed away on thursday, March 2, 2023 at the age of 89. His name is WAYNE SHORTER and it is simply impossible for me to truly convey all that I really want and need to say about this tremendous artist whose extraordinary 65 year career (his first recording took place in 1959!) has been a foundational beacon and creative guiding light for over three generations of not only musicians and composers but artists in dance, literature, cinema, painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts as well. The huge debt that we all owe this individual and his massive contributions to music and the creative forcefields of composition and improvisation can only be repaid by continuing to listen to and absorb, share, and celebrate the incredible ongoing legacy of love, imagination, discipline, generosity, wit, grace, and compassion that Wayne was well known and deeply respected for by friends, colleagues, comrades, and appreciative audiences throughout the world.

THANK YOU WAYNE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DID AND TRIED TO DO IN AN AMAZING LIFE AND CAREER NOW AND FOREVER.

RIP BROTHER. WE LOVE YOU

Kofi

'Without A Net'--2013 Blue Note recording by Wayne Shorter Quartet:

by Wayne Shorter - Topic 

http://artsmeme.com/2012/10/23/wayne-shorter-blows-horn-for-l-a-jazz-society/
Wayne Shorter blows his own horn at L.A. Jazz Society tribute 
 
23 Oct 2012 | Music · Reviews
 
by debra levine


At a swank do at the Universal Hilton Hotel Sunday evening, the Los Angeles Jazz Society, for the past 29 years the labor of love of Flip Manne (she’s the surviving widow of drummer Shelly Manne), honored saxophonist Wayne Shorter as its 2012 Jazz Tribute Honoree.

Movie maven Leonard Maltin, also a jazz lover, smoothly emceed the event.

A grand master of the art form both as composer and player, Shorter, whose jazz pedigree peaked with his mid-1960s membership in Miles Davis’s quintet (or was it his launching of the fusion group Weather Report?), thrilled the audience, all supporters of the Society’s jazz educational programs.
Among the evening’s other honorees was guitarist John Pisano, garnering a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Denise Donatelli, recipient for Jazz Vocalist. A cool cat named Gordon Goodwin accepted the award for arranger/composer, then led his Big Phat Band in his Grammy-winning blast-out of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” So colorful and so well played by Goodwin’s rambunctious 16-piece orchestra.

Presenting Shorter with the award (recent recipients include Arturo Sandoval, Poncho Sanchez, George Duke, and James Moody), singer Patti Austin quipped, “I spoke to Wayne a little while ago and asked him, ‘Why me?’ He told me he thought a woman should present his award. But then he asked me to send him “binders of women”!

“Wayne’s from New Jersey; from the school of innovators. He’s going to turn 80 next year. He’s a Leo-Virgo cusp. He’s my favorite Buddhist,” she said.

Shorter also made comments: “One word keeps coming to me. The word is singularity. When I talk to young people, I ask them what music is for — beyond money and fun. What is anything for? It has to be worth trusting being in the moment. That’s what jazz is. Being in the moment is creating singularity in your life.

“Tragedy is temporary. A single moment is an eternity. Singularity is about handling the unexpected.

“How do you rehearse the unknown? Not to be arrogant or scared … you have to start with courage or fearlessness. You have to turn a train wreck into an opportunity,” he offered, with slight solemnity.

Then breaking into a devilish grin he added, “and … have fun wid’ dat!”

With those words, Shorter repaired across the stage and joined a clutch of jazz kids from UCLA’s Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. Leading them, he laid down heavy sounds. Launching with his soprano saxophone into a super slow anthem, he built a wall of noise that erupted into the occasional screech, or blaring. It was all deliberate, all muscular; yes, he blew a mighty horn.

A huge thrill to hear Wayne Shorter in such great form.
International Jazz Day 2014: 
 
Wayne Shorter: Philosophy of Life Through Jazz:
May 14, 2014

This discussion features legendary saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. Organized by UNESCO and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the 2014 International Jazz Day Daytime Educational Program took place at the Osaka School of Music in Osaka, Japan.
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