San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Tireless music giant
Singular saxophonist, composer and band leader Wayne Shorter spent his entire career pushing forward with childlike wonder
Like the shape-shifting music he made throughout his life, Wayne Shorter was always pushing forward, always seeking new aural adventures and challenges. His March 2 death in Los Angeles at the age of 89 marks the passing of a tireless innovator whose fans ranged from countless jazz artists to such admirers as Carlos Santana, his periodic collaborator, and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. In a career that stretched across more than six decades, Shorter established himself as a singular tenor and soprano saxophonist, a brilliant composer, a fearless improviser and a first-rate band leader.
His work as a solo artist and as the co-founder of the hugely influential band Weather Report — like his tenures in the famed bands of Miles Davis and Art Blakey — defined him as a true original. So did his striking collaborations with such diverse artists as Joni Mitchell, the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan and Brazilian singing great Milton Nasciemento.
Shorter’s originality was as pronounced in conversation as onstage in performance, as he demonstrated in the four Uniontribune interviews I was privileged to do with him between 1985 and 2006.
“I hope my music will be regarded as an expression that came from a person who was indestructibly happy,” he told me in our first interview 38 years ago. “And who, if not thought of as happy at one time, arrived there — not through music — but through arriving at the highest possible life position. I’d like to be thought of not only for what I communicate, but also for what comes after.”
Shorter won the most recent of his 12 Grammy Awards in February. Yet, while he was accorded numerous accolades in his life, including becoming a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 2018, what really mattered to him was the quest to always push himself forward as an artist and as a person who transcended easy categorization.
“Whatever that word ‘jazz’ could mean, to me it’s the spirit of the pursuit of freedom and happiness,” Shorter told me in a 2002 interview. “And a sub-definition of jazz is: ‘No category.’ ”
Or, as he expounded in our 1997 chat: “I feel the freedom to do music and be creative (means) you should be able to work your creativity through any medium.
“And you gain wisdom through being gregarious as a person, rather than folding inward and declaring you are doing something ‘pure and uncontaminated.’ That’s the worst thing that can happen.”
Weather Report soared
Shorter’s ability to be creative in any medium was showcased the first time I heard him perform with Weather Report at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. The band’s dazzling creations were not jazz, fusion or world music, per se, but a beguiling combination of all of them — and more.
Yet, while Weather Report sold more albums and played to larger audiences than almost any other jazz-related band in the 1970s and early ’80s, Shorter’s role in the group gradually diminished before he quit in 1986. His album “Atlantis,” released in 1985, was his first solo outing in 11 years.
“Sometimes you have to be quiet to hear the rest of the world,” he said in 1985. “I think I’ve been quiet long enough.”
In any setting, Shorter carefully chose the notes he played for maximum effect. The clarity of his playing, whether simple or complex, always came through. The emotional depth of his performances and the fresh spirit that imbued his music helped him draw a multigenerational audience, even when he was in his 70s and 80s.
“When we play now, a lot of young people are in the audience,” Shorter said in 2006. “In fact, our most recent concerts have been filled with young people.
“We just played at Massey Hall in Toronto and at Interlochen in Michigan. And this never happened before, but the kids in Interlochen rushed the stage. It was not sold out, but there were almost 1,500 people there and almost all of them rushed the stage to shake hands with us. These were mostly 17- and 18-year-olds. Then we played in Ohio and the same thing happened. And it’s been the same in Europe over the past two years.”
The surge of interest in his music from young listeners may have surprised or even baffled cynics, at least those who contend that young people have no interest in the improvisational daring and structural intricacies of jazz.
Shorter, though, was more pleased than surprised at this unlikely turn of events.
‘The power of youth’
His birth in 1933 was six years before the Great Depression ended. But even as a senior citizen, he was wise enough to realize the importance of staying in touch with the unfettered curiosity that sparked his enduring interest in music, film and comic books as an adolescent. And he was convinced that his own youthful sense of adventure was a key reason the exceptional quartet he led from 2000 to 2019 connected so strongly with audience members young enough to be his great-grandchildren.
“We are assiduous in our efforts to remember what it’s like when you’re 10, 11, 12, 13 years old,” Shorter said in 2006. “Remember when you were a kid and you went out to play with your friends? If somebody would ask, ‘What are you kids doing?’ the answer would often be, ‘Oh, nothing.’ But we were improvising, playing in a world of make-believe.
“And people tend to lose that spirit as adults, when they face adult decisions, like marriage and all that. The idea of going outside and playing is lost, and making a decision with purity behind it is tainted by us giving up that power — the power of youth, the purity and the hunger for exploration.
“What we hear from these kids who come to hear us are things like: ‘Wow! We knew there was something new, something different, something creative.’ ”
This enticing combination of something new, different and creative was an artistic imperative for this New Jersey native since not long after the release of his first solo album, 1959’s “Introducing Wayne Shorter.”
Equally gifted on tenor and soprano saxophones, he launched his career in 1956 as a member of Horace Silver’s group. After serving in the U.S. Army, he joined trumpeter Maynard Ferguson’s band, followed by a five-year stint in Blakey’s famed Jazz Messengers. It was then that he started to come into his own as a player and a writer.
These two skills would fully blossom during his subsequent five years with Davis, when Shorter wrote such classics as “E.S.P.,” “Nefertiti” and “Footprints,” and recorded such landmark solo albums as “Speak No Evil” and “Super Nova.” All were testaments to his uncanny ability to write music that was both complex yet inviting, impeccably nuanced yet emotionally warm and free of even a hint of affectation.
Perhaps the most influential saxophonist-composer in modern jazz, post-john Coltrane, Shorter was remarkable in his bold use of form and texture. Ditto his ingeniously asymmetrical phrases, unexpected harmonies, and ability to fuse a variety of musical approaches — post-bop, blues, freeform, classical and more — into a singular body of work that still defies easy categorization.
“Miles used to ask, ‘How do you play certain things?’ But he didn’t mean music,” Shorter recalled in 2006.
“He got tired of hearing things that sounded like music, and that takes in all the pop music ever written. I would say that the pop music readily embraced by the majority of humanity, whether they’re musicians or not, is almost like a knee-jerk embracement. And that’s due to a lot of conditioning and taking things for granted, or because it creates a comfort zone.
“So, it’s very interesting to go into this process of total creativity, in order to give us a greater appreciation of what life really is. It’s an adventure. It’s an adventure to not think about the money and to use your imagination. Because a lot of imagination is not really imagination at all. I would say that Madison Avenue’s marketing devices just become obstacles for selfdiscovery. But all that cannot stop this honing device for creativity people are born with.”
Shorter defined jazz as “the spirit of the pursuit of freedom and happiness.”
It’s an approach that was shared by the musicians in his quartet — pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. They developed a telepathic rapport that allowed them to explore new musical vistas on a nightly basis.
“They don’t have superficial values,” Shorter told me about his three collaborators. “They’re not fooled by frivolous things, like envy, jealousy, or fighting about who’s going to be out front and this and that. The big thing we have going for us is trust. And we want to work this trust thing to a point where it actually proves that there’s no such thing as a (musical) coincidence or a mistake . ...
“We have these long, healthy moments (onstage) where we don’t know what we’re going to do. Even when we write something for ourselves or for the Imani Winds, we try to stay in the character of the unexpected. We’re involved with the unexpected, and they don’t have courses for the unexpected at university. We want to get you ready for the real world and get to the essence of what a human is.”
george.varga@sduniontribune.com
“Whatever that word ‘jazz’ could mean, to me it’s the spirit of the pursuit of freedom and happiness. And a sub-definition of jazz is: ‘No category.’ ”
Wayne Shorter