*Part of my surprisingly in depth jazz sequence!*
Source.
The nice sax participant and composer Wayne Shorter (1933–2023) (wiki; YouTube subject) died lately on the age of 89, having been on the coronary heart of a succession of excellent bands (tributes e.g. NYT; Guardian right here and right here).
From 1959 he was a core member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, recording albums corresponding to An evening in Tunisia—right here’s reside footage from Paris that yr:
Indestructible (recorded in 1964, issued in 1966) (as playlist):
and Free for all (1965) (as playlist):
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Eventually in 1964, Wayne was lured away by Miles Davis (cf. right here and right here) to affix his second nice quintet, really helpful by John Coltrane himself as his alternative. As Miles mirrored in his Autobiography, evocative and candid:
I knew that Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams had been nice musicians, and that they’d work as a bunch, as a musical unit. To have an excellent band requires sacrifice and compromise from everybody; with out it, nothing occurs. I assumed they may do it and so they did. You get the precise guys to play the precise issues on the proper time and you bought a motherfucker; you bought the whole lot you want.
If I used to be the inspiration and knowledge and the hyperlink for this band, Tony was the fireplace, the artistic spark; Wayne was the concept individual, the conceptualiser of an entire lot of musical concepts we did; and Ron and Herbie had been the anchors. I used to be simply the chief who put us all collectively. Those had been all younger guys and though they had been studying from me, I used to be studying from them, too, concerning the new factor, the free factor. Because to be and keep an excellent musician you’ve obtained to all the time be open to what’s new, what’s occurring in the intervening time. You have to have the ability to take up it if you happen to’re going to proceed to develop and talk your music. […] I knew that I used to be taking part in with some nice younger musicians that had their fingers on a distinct pulse.
Both Miles and Herbie deeply admired Wayne’s writing—Miles once more:
Wayne was the one individual that I knew then who wrote one thing like the best way Bird wrote, the one one. It was the best way he notated on the beat. Lucky Thompson used to listen to us and say, “Goddamn, that boy can write music!” When he got here into the band it began to develop much more and an entire lot sooner, as a result of Wayne is an actual composer.
The passage that follows refines our picture of “free” jazz:
He writes scores, writes the components for everyone simply as he needs them to sound. It labored precisely like that besides once I modified some issues. He doesn’t belief many individuals’s interpretations of his music; so he would convey out the entire rating and other people would simply copy their components from that, moderately than undergo the melody and modifications and decide our approach by way of the music like that.
Wayne additionally introduced in a sort of curiosity about working with musical guidelines. If they didn’t work, then he broke them, however with a musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the power to know the foundations with the intention to bend them to your satisfaction and style. Wayne was all the time on the market on his personal aircraft, orbiting round his personal planet. Everybody else within the band was strolling down right here on earth. He couldn’t do in Art Blakey’s band what he did in mine; he simply appeared to bloom as a composer when he was in my band. That’s why I say he was the mental musical catalyst for the band in his association of his musical compositions that we recorded.
Classic albums from this heady interval embody E.S.P. (1965):
Sorcerer (1967):
Miles smiles (1967):
Nefertiti (1968) (Miles: “it was with this album that people really began to notice what a great composer Wayne Shorter was”):
and Miles within the sky (1968):
For all the range of these albums, I discover it exceptional how usually Miles favoured the idiom of the busy earlier bebop model that he had sidelined with Kind of blue (1959).
Meanwhile Wayne was additionally making albums independently of Miles—corresponding to Night dreamer (1964), with Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, and Elvin Jones (as playlist):
Speak no evil:
and Juju (as playlist):
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Much as I like the Sixties’ pop scene, it’s taken me some time (Hello?) to understand the extraordinary creativity in jazz that adopted on the heels of the basic bebop period.
Moving on, Miles disbanded the quintet in 1969 after Wayne left, however they saved working collectively, with exploratory albums with Joe Zawinul such because the beautiful, contemplative In a silent approach (1969)—with Chick Corea in addition to Herbie and Joe on keys, and John McLaughlin on guitar:
They delighted additional in new keyboard timbres with the extraordinary double album Bitches’ brew (1970):
Again, Miles’s account of this era (Chapter 14) is fascinating. I’m all the time impressed that early bebop discovered such an viewers, however these later albums, even much less grounded within the reassuring signposts of conventional melody and concord, had been joyfully obtained too—even amidst the wealth of extra digestible common songs that had been thriving on the time, corresponding to soul (right here and right here) and the British scene (of which the Beatles had been simply the apex), to not point out the area of interest WAM avant-garde like Boulez.
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I could also be caught within the 60s, however Miles, Wayne, and Herbie weren’t, Through the Seventies, they had been avidly exploring the brand new sounds of funk, rock, and fusion. By now Wayne had largely switched from tenor to soprano sax; and like Herbie, he was absorbed in Nichiren Buddhism.
If you ask Wayne the time, he’ll begin speaking concerning the cosmos and the way time is relative.
From 1971 till 1986 he was a core member of Weather report with Joe Zawinul, making albums corresponding to I sing the physique electrical (1972) (these are all playlists):
Mysterious traveller (1974):
Heavy climate (1977):
Procession (1983):
Here they’re with their last line-up, reside in Cologne in 1983:
From the late Seventies Wayne was additionally half of VSOP, with Herbie, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams (from Miles’s 60s’ quintet), and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet:
Ever adaptable, Wayne additionally labored with Joni Mitchell (from 1977 to 2002), Carlos Santana, and Steely Dan. But he by no means uncared for jazz; from 2000 he performed in a quartet with Danilo Perez (piano), John Patitucci (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—right here they’re reside in Paris, 2012:
Coming up quickly: a companion submit on Herbie Hancock! Always price going again to What is severe music?!.
