[JPL] At 75, jazzman Wayne Shorter looks forward, not back by Zan Stewart/The Star-Ledger

[Jazz Promo Services]

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2008/11/at_75_jazzman_wayne_
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At 75, jazzman Wayne Shorter looks forward, not back
by Zan Stewart/The Star-Ledger
Saturday November 29, 2008, 10:00 PM

As original in his words as in his notes, Wayne Shorter has lofty artistic
goals.
"I want to do music that expresses eternity," says the saxophonist and
composer. "I want to do music that celebrates everybody who has had anything
to do with expressing themselves -- as musicians, novelists, in dance, maybe
even in politics."

That kind of fertile, unfettered thinking has sparked a bountiful,
60-plus-year career that kicked off when Shorter was a teenager in his
native Newark.

Shorter's prowess has been both as a tenor saxophonist with a bold, crying
sound, and an equally compelling soprano saxophonist, and as a wide-ranging
composer of numerous works.

As a performer, Shorter -- who joined the jazz major leagues with a brief
stint with pianist Horace Silver in 1956 -- worked in three seminal bands.
As a sideman, he played in Art Blakey's hard-driving Jazz Messengers from
1959 to 1964, and with Miles Davis' quintet, which offered a fresh direction
in acoustic, swinging jazz, from 1964 to 1970. That year, he formed the key
jazz/fusion band Weather Report with keyboardist Joe Zawinul, which ran
until 1985.

After another decade-plus of appearing as a soloist and with various small
ensembles, he formed his current quartet -- with pianist Danilo Perez,
bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade -- in 1999.

In his days with Blakey, Shorter started composing complex-yet-tuneful
works, many of which have become jazz standards.

Among his many compositions are his bustling-along "Children of the Night";
his enchanting ballad "Infant Eyes," written in three nine-bar sections, an
unusual structure; his blues in 6/4 meter "Footprints," a jam session
regular, and "E.S.P," a piece in which the melody moves in unexpected ways.

Shorter belatedly celebrates his 75th birthday -- he was born Aug. 25, 1933
-- in a concert Tuesday at Carnegie Hall in New York. The program features
the leader's quartet and the New York premiere of one of his latest works,
"Terra Incognita." It's an essentially classical piece, though undoubtedly
with jazz flavorings, commissioned by the five-member Imani Winds, which
will be playing it.

The Imani Winds is an African-American ensemble composed of flutist Valerie
Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, French hornist
Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis. The group was formed in 1997 and has
been performing various pieces with Shorter since last year.

"They've been pushing the window in the classical world, oh, man, have you
heard them?" Shorter asks in an interview from his home in West Hollywood,
Calif. "They transcribe and arrange other classical pieces, like a piano
work. And when they have to breathe, they daisy-chain, make it seamless, one
grabs on as another lets go.

"They contacted me, asked if I'd write something for them, and I did it,"
says Shorter, who studied composition at New York University with Modena
Scoville in the mid-1950s. "It's about 13-14 minutes long." The work was
debuted last year at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, Calif.

Asked to describe "Terra Incognita," Shorter simply suggests, in a friendly
manner, "You can come down and check it out for yourself."

But he does talk a bit, in a general, even philosophical way, about pieces
his quartet will do with Imani to close the concert. Among these are "The
Three Marias," from "Atlantis" (1985, Columbia), and perhaps a
newly-arranged version of his lovely 1960s waltz "Night Dreamer."

"This music is something. I don't like that word 'fusion' anymore. (It's) a
hybrid, something that points to, I would say, the trail less trodden on,"
he begins in his characteristic free-associative banter.

"The idea is how something doesn't stand still, things grow," he says. "The
way the world is today, there's a lot of trepidation about the unknown, If I
can get some music that expresses that, like, okay, let's deal with whatever
comes around the corner, maybe that expresses courage, (to) stand up to your
responsibility to humanity."

Talking about the collaboration with Imani leads Shorter to two of his
pieces he has expanded for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam:
"Forbidden Plan-It!" and "Flagships," which first appeared on his 1986
Columbia Records album, "Phantom Navigator."

"I'm hearing that audiences know atonal polyphonic music, but conductors
want something that takes the chill off that," says Shorter, who has begun
writing a piece for soprano Renee Fleming, at her request. "That's a
challenge, to do something that does not have the instant gratification
thing, that has whole human struggle in it, victory, ups and downs in it. I
figure we have to do some kind of music where the musicians are not
concerned about maintaining their musical foundation to be valid, about
putting their best foot forward. We're saying, 'Don't worry about that.'"

The last statement definitely applies to Shorter's quartet -- which, in
rendering any of the leader's tunes and those by others, as well, has an
anything-goes policy.

"Man, the musicians don't say, 'I don't can't do that, I don't want to do
this,'" he says. "Or, 'Hey, I was making a statement and you just
interrupted me, went right across me, got in my way.' You don't hear stuff
like that from these guys. They want to know, more and more, what is it for,
what is music for, what a person is and does, what is that for? Is that
tearing down or contributing something, opening doors? We're trying to
eradicate anything that continues to hijack the process."

Shorter tells an anecdote about an actress he has know since she was 17, who
came backstage recently after seeing the quartet. "She said, 'You guys are
playing without a safety net.'"

"Wayne's on a mission to challenge himself with every fiber of his being,"
says Patitucci, a Shorter colleague since the late 1980s. "He keeps
stretching as a player and composer. He's always writing, writing, writing.
He doesn't stand still. A lot of people who have achieved what he has might
have coasted for a while. He never did that."

Shorter has long had a deep fascination with film. During this phone
interview, between musical thoughts, he says, "I have to get this. It's
called 'The Dark Angel,' with Merle Oberon, Frederick March, Herbert
Marshall, came out in 1935." Turns out he was watching the cable channel
Turner Classic Movies, without sound, of course.

The idea of seeing someone's performance, enjoying it, sparks a memory from
his days with Miles Davis and leads to more musical philosophy.

"If I would talk with Miles, about the way I liked something I saw, heard
something, he'd say," and here Shorter's perfectly mimics the trumpeter's
raspy voice, "'Why don't you try and play that tomorrow?' That's what Miles
was trying to do, keeping it short and to the point. You try to do that in
the music.

"Sometimes you reach for clarity but you don't accomplish it, you can't just
spell it out like that," he says. "If you're really convinced you have
nothing to lose, better go for it. If you think you have something to lose,
you're not going to be honest."

Asking Shorter what his life in music has been like again yields an atypical
response.

"I feel that life in music enables me to be realistic with what's going on
and to see the resistance to what is known as moving ahead," he says. "The
corporate, Madison Avenue marketing machine presents a resistance to the
aspect of art that everyone has in them and is really so much fertilizer to
help us to grow. It's a strange kind of friendship, which they might even be
blind to, unless they climb to the other side, decide to write that novel,
paint. Imagine a CEO saying, 'I'm going take all this money I made and go
with some creative stuff; I don't care how much I lose.' They can't see the
gain is very inconspicuous. And what they gain is something very surprising.
That's difficult to do, take that path, especially when you think you know
everything."

Then he laughs. 

Wayne Shorter's 75th Birthday Concert
When: Tuesday, 8 p.m.
Where: Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh
Avenue, New York. 
How Much: $40-$85. Call (212) 247-7800 or visit carnegiehall.org.

Zan Stewart is the Star-Ledger's jazz writer. He is also a musician who
occasionally performs at local clubs. He may be reached at
zstewart at starledger.com or at (973) 324-9930