Wayne Shorter - Carnegie Hall 6/28/03

[bertrand]

I'll be driving up from DC with a friend for this concert. Anyone else going?

I'm in seats BB12-14.

See you there,

Bertrand.

[DrJ]

Ah, you're going to love it as I'm sure you know. Being "Way out West" I won't be there, but I saw Wayne's Quartet at the new Mondavi Arts Center at University of California, Davis this past Spring, which has an excellent acoustic. I was pretty much blown away, and excited to finally get to see Wayne live AND get to see Brian Blade again after having seen him and pianist Aaron Goldberg tear up what was otherwise a very mediocre show by Joshua Redman (I found myself wishing it had been a piano trio date!).

[Stefan Wood]

So how was it?

[7/4]

Melodic Landmarks, Ballad to Turbulence

By JON PARELES

NY Times

Wayne Shorter played brilliant hide-and-seek in his JVC Jazz Festival concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, the festival's last night. At times he placed his saxophone lines in plain view, caressing one of his serpentine melodies or buttonholing his quartet with insistent notes to signal the next turn. Just as often he burrowed into the ensemble, making quick ribbons of arpeggios or lightly puffed notes part of the full-group flux. The music was filled with abstruse harmonies and variable rhythms, but it didn't flaunt its convolutions. It used them to map a mental landscape where instability was a source of endless revelation.

Although the concert was billed as "Wayne Shorter: Life and Music," it was strictly present tense, not a retrospective like Mr. Shorter's 2002 album "Footprints Live."

The program began with a continuous half-hour set by Mr. Shorter's quartet followed by a duet with Herbie Hancock on piano. Both were utterly absorbing, using hints of various compositions — Mr. Shorter's "Go" with the quartet, Mr. Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" in the duet — to provide melodic landmarks in uncharted realms.

The quartet moved from ballad to turbulence, gathering insistent rhythms and dissolving them into uneasy introspection. Danilo Perez on piano used sharply glinting tone clusters and shimmering ostinatos; John Patitucci on bass segued counterpoint into vamps; Brian Blade on drums whispered with surreptitious momentum or snapped out climactic accents as the music traversed its modes and moods.

Mr. Shorter and Mr. Hancock played with a lambent delicacy. Mr. Hancock brought a preternatural transparency to sagely ambiguous chords; Mr. Shorter's soprano saxophone could sound like a troubled memory or a clarion. They played as if examining "Maiden Voyage" at the level of neurons and capillaries, discovering impulses and pathways still unseen.

For the second half of the concert the quartet, sometimes joined by Mr. Hancock, was accompanied by an orchestra conducted by Robert Sadin. The set included pieces from Mr. Shorter's current album, "Alegria" (Verve), on which Mr. Sadin conducts smaller chamber ensembles.

The orchestra at first threatened to rein in the music; when the full ensemble took up a melody along with Mr. Shorter, it sounded as if his ultra-maneuverable Porsche of a quartet were towing a trailer. Chords that were mysteriously implied by the small group were sometimes spelled out by the strings in Hollywood-epic pomp.

But then came the concert's next guest: the tap dancer Savion Glover, whose feet joined the rhythm section. Neither the audience nor the delighted musicians could take their eyes off Mr. Glover as he engaged each quartet member and galvanized the stageful of musicians, carrying the music down to a rustling patter and building it to peaks that had Mr. Shorter using the full thrust of his tenor saxophone to reply. As Mr. Glover moved, the music's constant inner drama took physical shape. B)