Wayne Shorter - On Vee-Jay: Wayne Shorter '2023

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Blues A La Carte
02. The Ruby And The Pearl
03. Devil's Island
04. Wayning Moments (Take 2)
05. Mack The Knife
06. Tenderfoot
07. Scourn'
08. All Or Nothing At All (Take 3)
09. Mr. Chairman
10. I Didn't Know What Time It Was
11. Pug Nose
12. Getting To Know You
13. Black Orpheus
14. Pay As You Go
15. Down In The Depths


 moreShorter started playing the clarinet at 16 but switched to tenor sax
before entering New York University in 1952. After graduating with a BME in
1956, he played with Horace Silver for a short time until he was drafted into
the Army for two years. Once out of the service, he joined Maynard Ferguson's
band, meeting Ferguson's pianist Joe Zawinul in the process. The following year
(1959), Shorter joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, where he remained until
1963, eventually becoming the band's music director. During the Blakey period,
Shorter also made his debut on record as a leader, cutting several albums for
Chicago's Vee-Jay label. After a few prior attempts to hire him away from
Blakey, Miles Davis finally convinced Shorter to join his quintet in September
1964.

Staying with Davis until 1970, Shorter became one of the band's most prolific
composer, contributing tunes like "E.S.P.," "Pinocchio," "Nefertiti,"
"Sanctuary," "Footprints," "Fall," and the signature description of Davis,
"Prince of Darkness." While playing through Davis' transition from loose,
post-bop acoustic jazz into electronic jazz-rock, Shorter also took up the
soprano in late 1968, an instrument that turned out to be more suited to riding
above the new electronic timbres than the tenor. As a prolific solo artist for
Blue Note during this period, Shorter expanded his palette from hard bop almost
into the atonal avant-garde, with fascinating excursions into jazz-rock
territory toward the turn of the decade.

In November 1970, Shorter teamed up with old cohort Joe Zawinul and Miroslav
Vitous to form Weather Report where, after a fierce start, Shorter's playing
grew mellower and more consciously melodic in order to fit into Zawinul's
concepts. By now he was playing mostly on soprano, though the tenor would
re-emerge toward the end of the group's run. Shorter's solo career was mostly
put on hold during the Weather Report days, though 1975's Native Dancer was an
attractive side trip into Brazilian-American tropicalismo made in tandem with
Milton Nascimento. Shorter also revisited the past in the late '70s by touring
with Freddie Hubbard and ex-Davis sidemen Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony
Williams as V.S.O.P.

Shorter finally left Weather Report in 1985. Still committed to electronics and
fusion, his recorded compositions from the period feature welcoming rhythms and
harmonically complex arrangements. After three Columbia albums between 1986 and
1988 -- Atlantis, Phantom Navigator, and Joy Ryder -- and a tour with Santana
(represented by the 2005 album Montreux 1988), he lapsed into silence, emerging
again in 1992 with Wallace Roney and the V.S.O.P. rhythm section in the "A
Tribute to Miles" band. In 1994, now on Verve, Shorter released High Life, an
engaging electric collaboration with keyboardist Rachel Z.

He continued playing concerts with a wide range of groups and appeared on a
number of recordings as a guest including the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon
in 1997 and Herbie Hancock's Gershwin's World in 1998. In 2001, he was back with
Hancock for Future 2 Future and on Marcus Miller's M². Footprints Live! was
released in 2002 under his own name with a new band that included pianist Danilo
Pérez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, followed by Alegria
in 2003 and Beyond the Sound Barrier in 2005.

Though absent from recording, Shorter continued to tour regularly with the same
quartet after 2005. They re-emerged to record again in February of 2013 with a
live outing from their 2011 tour. Without a Net, his first recording for Blue
Note in 43 years, was issued in February of 2013 as a precursor to his 80th
birthday. Just after that release, the Wayne Shorter Quartet performed four of
the leader's compositions with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in
New York City. Shorter immediately brought the quartet and orchestra into the
studio to record those same four pieces: "Pegasus," "Prometheus Unbound,"
"Lotus," and "The Three Marias," as a unified suite. The title of this
four-composition orchestral suite is also Shorter’s title character for
the graphic novel Emanon, or "no name" spelled backward. Each of the four
movements has a corresponding theme in a graphic novel penned by Shorter and
Monica Sly and illustrated by Randy DeBurke. It draws inspiration from the
concept of a multiverse (where numerous universes co-exist simultaneously) and
features a character named Emanon, an action-hero proxy of Shorter, a comic book
aficionado since he was a boy. The story alludes to dystopian oppression and was
clearly informed by the saxophonist's Buddhist studies. All told, the music --
performed by the quartet with and without the chamber orchestra -- was recorded
live in London as well as in the studio, creating a triple album accompanied by
the 84-page graphic novel. Emanon was issued in September of 2018, just after
Shorter's 85th birthday. His next project proved just as ambitious, writing an
opera based around the myth of Iphigenia, a Greek princess. Shorter co-created
the work with librettist esperanza spalding and set designer Frank Gehry. The
work merged jazz and classical themes and premiered in New York at the end of
2021. The following year Candid released Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival.
Recorded at the 2017 event, it featured Shorter in a one-off quartet setting
that included drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, bassist/vocalist esperanza
spalding, and Argentine pianist Leo Genovese. It proved to be the last music
issued during his lifetime, as he passed away in March of 2023 at the age of 89.
© Richard S. Ginell



Wayne Shorter - On Vee-Jay: Wayne Shorter.rar - 493.7 MB

Related artists