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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Master at work, March 26, 2003
One thing you have to say about Miles Davis, he could pick a sax player.......
From the days when the 60's Davis quartet came together to today, one of the most enduring figures in jazz has been Wayne Shorter. There is little that he touches, be it as a composer or performer, that doesn't have his sense of grace. There is such power and devotion in his music. In so many spiritual ways, as well as from an historical perspective, he is indeed the rightful successor to the spiritual quest begun by John Coltrane.Last year, Shorter released a remarkable live album, FOOTPRINTS. He returns in 2003 with the sublimely soulful ALEGRIA, that features the same basic line up of Danila Perez, John Patitucci, Brain Blade and Alex Azuna. Terri Lynne Carrington and Brad Mehldau and a host of remarkable chamber players round out the cast on this stirring release. The hypnotic element in Shorter's playing is at its most powerful in interpretations of "Bachiabas Brasileiras No 5", and in his dramatic reworking of "Angola". Rhythms percolate, solos appear and fade into the ether, the human soul is transported.
From the opening "Sacajawea" to the closing "Capricorn", the dark mysteries and compelling flights of a man who has lived much, suffered unspeakable loss , and has remained philosophical is on full display. Never has the traditional Irish Gaelic air "She Moves Through The Fair" been imbued with such mystery and passion. Shorter switches in most pieces from tenor to soprano sax, and he engages in a very Socratic dialogue in the course of these changes: this is not simply overdubbing, this is a dialectic of approaching the meaning in the music from 2 very different questioning, questing perspectives, and the questioning undergone here leaves open so much ground for further contemplation.
The music swings with African and Cuban undercurrents, the occasional Gaelic haunt, and in all cases a sense of absolute commitment to Music itself. You willbe hard pressed to find a more satisfying release this year in all of Music. Critics are comparing this to SKETCHES OF SPAIN. It is not as heavily orchestrated, but it has that same mystic fascination with the dark night of the soul where communion with something very much more fundamental than human temporal existence is at work.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Record of the Year--Heck, the Decade, if not the Century, March 25, 2003
The first thing one is struck by is the wild eclecticism of the material. There are four rather lesser known Shorter compositions, "Sacajawea," from I don't know where; "Angola," from Soothsayer; "Orbits," I also don't know where this came from; and "Capricorn II," a Miles Davis-era number. There is one rather famous classical number, "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5," by Heitor Villa-Lobos. There is one light classical number, "Serenata," by the popular American classic-lite composer, Leroy Anderson, who wrote such high school band staples as "Sleigh Ride," "The Syncopated Clock," and "The Waltzing Cat." And there is a number, "Vendiendo Alegría," by Milka Himel and Joso Spralja, probably a folk-styled composition. I do not know who Milka Himel is (was?), but Joso Spralja is (was?) a Canadian immigrant from Dalmatia who made several popular recordings of a wide variety of world folk musics. Then there is a remarkable rendering of a 12th Century Carol and a very pleasant reading of "She Moves through the Fair," a traditional folk song.On its face, this doesn't look like a particularly promising musical slate. But wait a minute. We're talking Wayne Shorter here, one of the greatest, most honored, and highly recorded composers in the history of jazz music. Shouldn't we trust his compositional acumen to uncover somewhat unlikely gems, polish them up, and place them in entirely appropriate settings? Yes, we should. Link him up with some of the premier jazz artists on the scene today, and with the glorious conducting talents of Robert Sadin, find him in absolute top form on both soprano (his main ax) and tenor saxophone, and you've got quite a record. Despite some rather elaborate and, one must say, very pleasing sound palettes, including as many as fourteen players on one number, there is a basic band providing the backbone to this music: Shorter, soprano and tenor sax (sometimes overdubbed), John Patitucci, bass, Danilo Perez or Brad Mehldau, piano, and Brian Blade or Terri Lynn Carrington, drums. It's hard to say who's better--Perez or Mehldau on piano or Blade or Carrington on drums. If I had to choose, I think I'd pick Perez and Carrington. The beginning cut, a number near the middle, and the last cut feature the quartet of Shorter, Patitucci, Perez, and Blade (with Shorter overdubbing on two of the three selections). These numbers seem to function as a kind of anchor for the more elaborate flights of fancy, perhaps intentionally referencing the small groups of the Blue Note era. On the first few listens, nothing particularly revolutionary seems to be happening on Alegría; this is certainly not the same kind of thing Dave Douglas is doing on Freak In, for example As one familiarizes oneself with this remarkable music, little things begin to jump out, such as the truly amazing percussion stylings of Alex Acuña (whom I just can't say enough about), especially on the mindblowing world-music treatment of the 12th Century Carol, the gloriously elegiac reading of the Villa-Lobos piece, and the thoroughly modern and pleasing rendition of "Angola," sounding more mysterious and "African" than ever before. The quirky logic and persuasive power of Shorter's soloing also begins to reveal itself after several listens. In the end, one begins to realize that Shorter is doing something just as revolutionary as Douglas or The Bad Plus--taking "conventional" music and imbuing it with his own special magic, thus transforming the quotidian into the exceptional. Indeed, Shorter's magic may be even deeper that Douglas's, because he's working with, ahem, "baser" materials. Really, the more I listen to this, the more astounded I am. This is pure magic. This is the album of a lifetime--what we've all been waiting for Wayne Shorter to make but which he really hasn't up till now. Well, I'm here to tell you, the wait is over. Welcome to Wayne's world.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
news from the musical architect, April 27, 2003
A new studio album by Wayne Shorter is always a sensation. The last one was released in 1995 ( High Life, a Marcus Miller production), so how does Wayne sound in the new millennium?
Well, in a way, pretty much the same as since the 80's, insofar as he employs the same kind of compositional approach to music. This can be summarized as an architectural or maybe rather, a structural, approach, which introduces elements of the modern concert music into - well, what's left of Jazz. Wayne Shorter has a very unique and immediately recognizable way of doing this.
Incidentally, it's the first all-acoustic recording from him since back in the 60's. This is not really such an important point, even though there are people who would like to segregate the world into acoustic and deplorable non-acoustic - nonsense! It does, however, give the music a coloring more suitable to Wayne's world than on those 80's records with their plastic drums, which are mainly responsible for the way those records ( Atlantis, Phantom Navigator and Joy Rider) have aged and now sound dated, despite their great moments.
Wayne Shorter still plays very well and a lot here. To me, he is the best sax player alive. And the songs? There are new and older compositions by Wayne; the older ones are practically de- and reconstructed, you can hardly recognize them, quite a thrill for those who know the tunes from before. And there are compositions from other sources, like a 12th century carol (also completely deconstructed). Wayne Shorter certainly has strong Jazz roots, but this means little as far as his present musical interests are concerned. This free mind is a rare thing to be found anywhere, especially in the segregated world of American Jazz. And it's one of the reasons, which make Alegria so special.
The opening track is the least palatable to me: kind of hectic, much too constructed, far too intelligent for me. After that, the album finds its pace. The majority of the tracks tend to run at medium or slow speed. And that is good for the music and for the listener, for the compositions are all rather complicated, and at the slower pace, one can grasp the music and therefore appreciate it. Wayne plays both the soprano and the tenor saxes, sometimes at the same time, arrangements as well as solos, and this works better here maybe than ever before. The musicians: we are listening to a small orchestra here, and even though there are sometimes small solos, they are not what this music is about; it's not opera but a narrative, so to speak.
All in all, Alegria is a highly welcome production.
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