Album review: Wayne Shorter - Volume One (Blue Note)

Wayne Shorter (tenor/soprano sax); Danilo Perez (piano); John Patitucci (bass); Brian Blade (drums)

Wayne Shorter's last concert, recorded live at the Stockholm Jazz Festival in 2014 is, in retrospect, quite a poignant affair. It isn't an easy listen. Music that is meaningful rarely is the first time around. It takes repeated listenings to fully assimilate what you're hearing, to absorb the nuances, the subtleties of a creative art unfolding before your eyes and ears - particularly your ears.

If I'd been at the Stockholm Concert Hall on that evening I'd have joined in with the audience's applause although perhaps not as vociferously as I might have done had I been listening to Wayne back in the day with the Jazz Messengers.

However, unlike a concert where the moments are ephemeral, on record, those fleeting moments can be recaptured and, for better or for worse, relived. In this case the better far outweighs the worse. The more I listened, often replaying tracks, the more it grew upon me.

At this stage of his career the lung issues that he'd been battling with for a number of years were taking hold and his musical noesis entered into a less is more mode which is often not a bad place to be.

A year after this concert he finally came to terms with the realisation he could no longer play. So what did he do? He wrote an opera (as one does). Iphegenia, composed by Wayne Shorter and Esmeranza Spalding, was performed at the 2023 EFG London Jazz Festival and reviewed by guest reviewer A.J. Dehany HERE. 

The music on this album came about after Wayne had listened to recordings of various concerts he'd played in different countries. The booklet contains his written comments from gigs in Stuttgart, Poland, Melbourne, San Francisco, Juan Le Pins and, of course, Stockholm. This latter concert was the one he was most satisfied with. It's a monument to a great musician in fact it's a CELEBRATION! Lance

Disc one: Zero Gravity to the 15th Dimension; Smilin' Through; Zero Gravity to the 11th Dimension; Zero Gravity to the 12th Dimension; Zero Gravity - Unbound; Orbits; Edge of the World (End Title).

Disc two: Zero Gravity to the 90th Dimension; Lotus; She Moves Through the Fair