Wayne Shorter – Celebration Volume 1
(Blue Note 6535068. Album review by Phil Johnson)
This is a no-brainer. According to general agreement Wayne Shorter was one of the greatest instrumentalists and composers in jazz history. His last quartet with the pianist Daniel PerezBassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade is considered one of the best small groups of all time. Their long and active history from their formation in 2000 to Shorter’s last performance in 2018 resulted in a series of acclaimed live performances around the world (and a few live albums too). Now, following Shorter’s death in March last year, the first in a series of tribute releases from his label is out. And it’s absolutely brilliant.
The live album, which captured a particularly inspired performance at the 2014 Stockholm Jazz Festival and spanned two CDs and two LPs, was chosen for release by Shorter shortly before his death after he had been sent several concert recordings to listen to. “You’ve got to come and hear this shit!” his wife Carolina recalls him shouting across the house. “Look at what these guys are doing!” That the performance was so satisfying was not a given. As a bandleader, Shorter could be generous to the point of extravagance, content to showcase his musicians’ contributions more than himself, and reluctant to give anyone anything that might be construed as instructions.
“The only thing is to leave everyone alone,” he told me in an interview in his dressing room before going onstage with the quartet at Birmingham Symphony Hall in 2003, when the group was still young. “That’s it, there was Miles,” he said. “We never had rehearsals with Miles. Everyone was on their own, like at university. Anyone who acted like a high school student didn’t even get in. All that conditional stuff, that’s a judgmental thing, like ‘Why don’t you do that?’ … It’s like people think they’re the professor, the same as saying ‘Attention!’ or ‘Seig Heil!'”
Accordingly, Shorter’s own groups, at least before the quartet, sometimes lacked a little coherence or direction, and even the quartet had an occasional tendency to strum around. Of course, since the hand-picked musicians, who were themselves bandleaders, were so skilled and showed so much sensitivity to each other’s contributions, this was strumming at the highest level. But although there is plenty of room on “Celebration Volume 1” for Perez, Patitucci and Blade to shine, Shorter remains front and center for a very good portion of the entire running time. And even better, he sounds at the peak of his late form on tenor and soprano saxophone. He is also remarkably experimental in his playing almost throughout, and that is really a cause for celebration: In his early eighties, Wayne Shorter still sounded ahead of the competition, even avant-garde, at the time of the Stockholm concert.
Not yet a subscriber to our “Wednesday Breakfast Headlines”?
Subscribe to the mailing list to receive a weekly summary of jazz news.
The compositions on the album are divided into five group improvisations, equally credited to all musicians, entitled, with various changes, “Zero Gravity” (also the title of the rich and rewarding series of films about Shorter made by director Dorsay Alavi) and several standalone titles. These include Shorter’s originals “Orbits,” “Lotus,” and “She Moves Through the Fair” (which, to my ears, has little – or nothing? – to do with the traditional folk tune of the same name), as well as the standard “Smilin’ Through” and a film theme, “Edge of the World,” which Shorter plays superbly on soprano. This – the last piece on the first disc – and “She Moves Through The Fair,” the last piece on the second disc, are truly astonishing and very soulful. But then again, much of the concert lives up to that extremely high standard. What an album, what a legacy, and what a man. The band is great throughout, but Danilo Pérez is consistently outstanding.
Celebration Volume 1 will be released on August 23rd. Other recent releases from Blue Note Wayne Shorter include:
- A Tone Poet vinyl edition from the 1970s Odyssey of Iskawill be released on July 5th
- A classic vinyl edition from 1964 JuJuwill be released on 16 August
- An exclusive reissue of the 1964 album “The Blue Note Authorized Dealer” on blue vinyl. Speak no evil (1964) in selected independent record stores, available on August 9th
LINK: Buy Celebration Volume 1 by Presto Music
Richie Beirach’s tribute to Wayne Shorter from 2023
