Wayne Shorter Quartet
Released in February, 2013
Jazzwise Top 10 Releases of 2013
DownBeat Album of the Year Critics Poll
The Guardian 50 Highest Rated Jazz Albums of All Time
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0XN6LfRBBk8&list=OLAK5uy_l_hpNYUoJgevp1QaqHrrGgaoZiTBKrjhU
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3iEfbr1YRsGDXMSF5MJN5b?si=ZPRMuEzUSZCjLru2mW48Yg
About:
In a set of recordings captured mostly on a 2011 tour, Wayne Shorter returns to Blue Note after a 43 year absence sounding vital, relevant, and uncompromising. With his trio of heavyweights (pianist Danílo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade) Shorter demonstrates his authoritative relevance as a composer—after deconstructing “Orbits” (from 1967’s Miles Smiles) he offers no less than six new compositions. Impressive for an 80-year old, right? Wait until he picks up his horn. The interplay and improvisational aptitude fills this Editors’ Choice with hairpin turns, exploratory dialogue, and brash musical stunts. When Shorter hits the stratosphere while soloing on the 23-minute “Pegasus,” the mics catch an astonished Blade utter, “Oh my God.” Our sentiment exactly.
Track Listing:
1. Orbits (Wayne Shorter) 4:50
(Grammy Award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo 2014)
2. Starry Night (Wayne Shorter) 8:49
3. S.S. Golden Mean (Wayne Shorter) 5:18
4. Plaza Real (Wayne Shorter) 6:59
5. Myrrh (Wayne Shorter) 3:05
6. Pegasus (Wayne Shorter) 23:08
7. Flying Down to Rio (Edward Eliscu / Gus Kahn / Vincent Youmans) 12:47
8. Zero Gravity to the 10th Power (Brian Blade / John Patitucci / Danilo Pérez / Wayne Shorter) 8:13
9. (The Notes) Unidentified Flying Objects (Brian Blade / John Patitucci / Danilo Pérez / Wayne Shorter) 4:13
Personnel:
Wayne Shorter: tenor and soprano saxophones
Danilo Perez: piano
John Patitucci: bass
Brian Blade: drums
Recorded December 8, 2010, at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Produced by Wayne Shorter
Executive Producer: Scott Southard
Mixing and Engineering: Rob Griffin
Mastering: Mark Wilder
Photography: Robert Ascroft
Review:
It was 44 years ago that Wayne Shorter made his debut on the Blue Note label, as a precocious 26-year-old tenor saxophonist in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1959. Now in his 80th year, he has re-signed with the label that was scene of some of his great triumphs of the 1960s, when label founder Alfred Lion invited him to record as a leader in his own right in 1964 that resulted in classics such as Night Dreamer, Juju, Speak No Evil, Adam’s Apple and Super Nova. It’s been a long journey since then, worldwide acclaim as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet and with Weather Report, and in more recent times with his own quartet, which made its debut on record in 2002. But Without a Net is something special, comprising eight tracks recorded during the quartet’s 2011 European tour and the ninth track, the 23-minute ‘Pegasus’, recorded at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with the Imani Winds. The result is Blue Note’s finest recording since its reincarnation in the 1980s under EMI and quite possibly the finest album of Shorter’s career. The starting point of this group is the abstracted improvisational forms explored by Miles Davis in the 1960s that culminated in one of the great classics of recorded jazz, Live at the Plugged Nickel from 1965, its precepts carried forward through subsequent Miles groups, such as the lost sessions of 1969, through into his abstract jams of Bitches Brew and beyond. This is the key that unlocks the door to this remarkable album, where Shorter’s maxim of “rehearsing the unknown,” with everyone responding to the impulses of the moment, results in some inspired music making that represents jazz at its finest, not just in the here and now, but of the past and the future as well.
Stuart Nicholson (Jazzwise)
