There is a new Wayne Shorter Quartet album coming out on
February 5th! I’m excited, you should be too. I was just 13 years
old when I saw this band for the first time and got completely blown out of the
water. They’re 2004 album Beyond the
Sound Barrier was a mainstay for me and a bunch of close friends for most
of high school. Now I know a bunch of people have heard Sound Barrier by now, and I think most people like it, but if you
haven’t got the chance to see them live you are missing out on the fact that by the time that album came out, the band
had already progressed a few light-years beyond what you hear on those
recordings. In the early 2000’s the band was making a name for itself with
radical revisions of classic pieces from Shorter’s oeuvre. When I saw them in
2004, they played three pieces, each stretching well over half an hour, with no
readily discernible form. This band deals with improvisation on a grand scale.
Furthermore, they are navigating this terrain without falling prey to any of
the more tedious tropes that even the best improvisers often fall into. Shorter
and company don’t embrace the more pure sense of improvisation that people in
the free jazz scene tend to follow, While the idea of improvisation as a form
of composition has been thrown around a lot, The Wayne Shorter Quartet’s music
is one of the few working bands that actually justify use of such a phrase. I
really don’t exaggerate in saying that they have the greatest sense of timing,
patience and group rapport of anyone band that I’ve had occasion to hear. One
of there improvisations really does feel like a structured, considered
composition, without losing any of the immediacy of composition.
One could still wonder, whether this new album will capture
the band’s live personality (or could any album do this?) Like their previous
two albums, this next one will be a collection of live recordings from the
band’s tours. As excellent as those records are, they don’t sound very similar
to the band’s live performances, at least not the way that they play now. The
new record also features a rather extended piece featuring the Imani Wind
Quartet. Well… I’m skeptical about that one, but I’m perfectly willing to be
proven wrong. There’s really no saying what this album will be like, but if you
care about jazz and/or improvised music, there is really no excuse for sleeping
on this one.
