Beyond the Sound Barrier

Wayne Shorter | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 14, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Verve
• ASIN: B0009I8QAY
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,106 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Wayne Shorter took jazz by storm with 2002’s Footprints Live!, marking the return of the firebrand improviser of the 1960s after decades of self-effacing fusion. Beyond the Sound Barrier continues in the same vein, with more live recordings of his working quartet. Pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade bring a mercurial collective creativity to the project, adding a fresh urgency to the kind of interactivity that marked Shorter’s classic Blue Notes and his work with Miles Davis. The group can venture into free jazz on "Tinker Bell," explore the classical lyricism of Mendelssohn’s "On Wings of Song," or bring new life to older compositions, as with the leader’s spinning, high velocity runs on "Joy Ryder" and the multi-dimensional exploration of "Over Shadow Hill Way." Each track is an adventure, with Shorter’s saxophones dancing through the band’s creative firestorm. --Stuart Broomer

Product Description

SHORTER WAYNE BEYOND THE SOUND BARRIER

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will be hard to beat as top jazz relase of 2005, June 14, 2005

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Sound Barrier (Audio CD)

This follow-up to 2002's brilliant Footprints Live! finds Wayne Shorter's working group performing at an even higher level. Each member seems to have grown in stature, and the group sound is both more cohesive and adventurous. Danilo Perez in the piano chair especially impresses. The young Panamanian not only provides very smart and sophisticated chordal underpinnings, he constantly spins off intriguing solo lines and bright staccato flourishes. Brian Blade in the interim has added a wide variety of percussive moves on his kit, providing a huge energy boost to the proceedings. And if he occasionally sounds a little overbearing, it's good to hear the drums recorded so up-front in the mix. Bassist Patitucci plays freer and with greater abandon than I've ever heard him before, yet still providing absolutely apposite grounding. He can also whip off some stunning solo statements, both arco and pizzicato, as on the Mendelssohn piece, "On Wings of Song," perhaps the most amazing track on the record, with its shifting moods, colors, tempi, and sonorities.

But it's the leader who makes the strongest impression, especially on tenor. Over the years, he's developed an approach to his instrument that is completely his own. It sounds as if he's got a huge volume of breath undergirding his sound, resulting in a kind of restrained power that can dance or float or launch out with huge expressivity. His soprano playing, more typically virtuosic, often leaves listeners scratching their heads in consternation at the power, fleetness, tonal control, and sheer inventiveness of line. Check out, especially, his extended solo at the end of "Joyrider," for a taste of what I mean. His solo on "Over Shadow Hill Way," if less obviously spectacular, displays perhaps an even grander conceptual brilliance, and the piece, so rhythmically infections and, finally, overwhelming in its forcefulness, ends up making perhaps the strongest impression of any track on the disc. Shorter can sometimes be overly cerebral and somewhat chilly, especially on soprano, as on his duo recording with Herbie Hancock, 1 + 1, but although he here plays with marvelously conceived solos that sometimes venture into the stratosphere, he never loses sight of the architecture of the piece, maintaining both an emotional and formal connection no matter how far out he goes. And it just keeps getting better. The solo he takes on "Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean" simply astounds.

The songs, five by Shorter, one standard, one classical piece (the Mendelssohn) and one group improvisation, seem to move almost seamlessly from one to another. Obviously, a great deal of care went into their selection and sequencing, resulting in almost a suitelike effect. And if there's a little too much audience reaction retained on the disc for this listener, for once, at least, it's justified by what one has just been heard. Really, this band makes simply glorious music, and you can see why the audience goes nuts.

The recording is startling in its clarity and precision, both from the standpoint of the band's near-flawless playing and the quality of the sound that the disc captures: Each instrument is precisely situated within the sound signature, carefully balanced against the others, enabled to achieve is proper voice, timbre, and sonority.

Explosive, heady, emotive, sophisticated, approachable: This is jazz at its absolute finest.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A synthesis of a great artist's lifetime of music, June 19, 2005

By 

Ron Kline (Philly) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Sound Barrier (Audio CD)

I recommend Michelle Mercer's recently published biography, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, for insight into this quartet and its working method. She spent a great deal of time with Wayne Shorter and his band and she paints a vivid portrait of the group on the road. Mercer's biography also tells the story of the many obstacles Shorter overcame to finally create this amazing band.

And this band is amazing, the best working group in jazz, but that was already established on the dynamic 2002 recording Footprints Live. As previous reviewers pointed out, the improvisation here is more vibrant and refined. Even better, on Beyond the Sound Barrier, there's an opportunity for listeners to trace a continuum in Wayne Shorter's far-ranging oeuvre. He's in a late period of his career and like the greatest classical musicians is reaching a mature synthesis of an entire lifetime of music.

For example, the band's acoustic reworkings of material from Wayne Shorter's fusion years might allow fusion detractors to hear that he was using the same approach to music all along, no matter if electric or acoustic instruments were involved. On his 80s recordings for Columbia, "Over Shadow Hill Way" and "Joy Ryder" featured a wealth of overlayed melodies and harmonies, though the backbeats and electronic textures obscured the good stuff for many listeners (Musicians, who have long embraced Shorter's Columbia recordings, heard it all along). On this current recording, the acoustic setting highlights the rhythmic and harmonic beauty and complexity of these tunes, for all to hear.

Other examples: "As Far As The Eye Can See" is a reworking of "Go," from Shorter's Blue Note era. "Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean" is actually a section from "High Life." Shorter often attests that he's never actually finished with a work of music. There's ample evidence of that here.

Of course, you don't need to know anything about Shorter's musical history to appreciate the music on Beyond the Sound Barrier. These guys communicate with a depth, animation, and joy that anyone can appreciate. See them live if you can.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mind-blowing innovation from one of the masters!, June 15, 2005

By 

Max Marshall (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Sound Barrier (Audio CD)

When I first heard Wayne Shorter's "comeback" album, 2002's Footprints! Live, I was totally blown away. At nearly 70 years of age, Shorter had founded one of modern jazz's most innovative, explosive, energetic bands. Now with their second live album, the quartet ups the ante. "Beyond the Sound Barrier" should be heavily considered for the best jazz album of the year, and could also be one of the best in Shorter's long, dynamic career. Here, the band plays with more energy and passion than they did on Footprints Live. The whole atmosphere seems to have been super-charged here. The band, after a moody, ethereal intro, really gets rocking about halfway through the opening track, a TOTALLY SUBVERSIVE cover of the 1941 film theme, "Smilin' Through". That subversion and highly cerebral mood continues throughout much of the album. Shorter's work on soprano is some of the most extreme, impassioned playing I've ever heard. And he is constantly supported by his equally talented rhythm section of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade. The band has an almost uncanny ability to turn on a dime from quiet and restrained to wild and boiling.

Everyone who calls themselves a jazz fan ought to run out to the store and buy this album right now!