Catching up with Wayne Shorter on Blue Note

from the Amazon.com Web page for the collection being discussed

My awareness of saxophonist Wayne Shorter came relatively late in the history of my listening to recorded music. It resulted from my decision to keep up with the series of collections of recordings that trumpeter Miles Davis had made for Columbia. These included both of the “Great Quintet” performances (the first of which was sometimes expanded to a sextet). Shorter was the last musician that Davis recruited for his second quintet, following Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. Recordings of that quintet covered the period from 1964 to 1968.

Around the time that the “Second Great Quintet” anthology had been released, I was just beginning to build up a collection of Mosaic anthologies as a result of my getting on the mailing list for Blue Note Records. That led to my discovery of Shorter’s earliest albums on Vee-Jay Records: Introducing Wayne Shorter, Second Genesis, and Wayning Moments. Only later did I learn that, during his tenure with Davis, Shorter was also making albums for Blue Note. For a very long time, I knew of only one of those albums, Speak No Evil.

More recently I discovered that the “revived” Blue Note, led by President Don Was, was reissuing past recordings through a 5 Original Albums series.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I purchased the Wayne Shorter collection about a month ago. The span of content over the five albums is impressive. Here are the titles, dates, and personnel joining Shorter on tenor saxophone for each of them:

1. Night Dreamer, 1964: Lee Morgan, trumpet; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie (listed as “Reginald”) Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums
2. The SoothSayer, 1965: James Spaulding, alto saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; McCoy Tyner, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums
3. Etcetera, 1965: Herbie Hancock, piano; Cecil McBee, bass; Joe Chambers, drums
4. Adam’s Apple, 1966: Herbie Hancock, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Joe Chambers, drums
5. Schizophrenia, 1967: Curtis Fuller, trombone; James Spaulding, alto saxophone and flute; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums

Shorter’s reputation was first firmly established during the late Fifties, when he was a member of The Jazz Messengers, led by drummer Art Blakey. During his tenure, he would become Blakey’s primary composer. After leaving the Messengers in the Sixties, he was able to draw upon past Messengers and present members of the Davis quintet to contribute to his Blue Note recording sessions. Almost all of the tracks in this collection are original compositions by Shorter. The only exceptions are single tracks on three of the albums composed by Gil Evans (on Etcetera), Jimmy Rowles (on Adam’s Apple), and James Spaulding (on Schizophrenia).

To say that all of this makes for rich listening experiences would be the height of understatement. Each of these albums deserves multiple listenings, and I am just beginning to get my head around an initial sampling of all of the tracks. Personally, I am more than merely glad that all five of these albums have been given a new lease on life.

My only cautionary observation is that serious listeners would do well to have a magnifying glass readily available. Each CD has its own sleeve. The original album cover is on the front of the sleeve, while the back provides information about the content. That information includes valuable commentary by writers such as Nat Hentoff, Blue Note Producer Michael Cuscuna, and Leonard Feather. However, trying to read all of that material may be hazardous to visual acuity if attempted without the assistance of a magnifier!

Chick Corea in Davies Symphony Hall

Chick Corea at his Yamaha piano (from the event page on the SFS Web site)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Great Performers Series presented a solo recital by Chick Corea. It would be easy (and not that inaccurate) to call Corea a jazz pianist. However, in 1995 he made his SFS debut, playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 466 piano concerto in D minor with Bobby McFerrin conducting. Corea’s repertoire extends over a variety of jazz genres, but it is clearly not limited to those genres.

Indeed, the breadth of that repertoire was captured in the title for last night’s program, From Mozart to Monk. This turned out to be a bit inaccurate; and, for my part, I would have preferred that he had appropriated the title of the second volume of memoirs by the great actress Ruth Gordon, Myself Among Others. The second half of the program was all Corea (the “myself” section), divided between compositions and improvisations. The first half covered the “others,” presented in the musical equivalent of wine pairings, each of which coupled a classical composer with a jazz selection.

Now 78 years old, Corea still commands a solid piano technique. Like any jazz pianist, he has his knapsack of tropes; and, over the course of a full-evening performance, the attentive listener will come to recognize what many of those tropes are. As a result, while there was considerable diversity in both halves of last night’s program, it was not difficult to ascertain how Corea put his personal stamp on everything he played.

On the other hand, last night he took approaches to improvisation that offered some potential of moving beyond those tropes. Two of those improvisations amounted to portraits. He placed a chair beside the piano and invited members of the audience to sit while he improvised his impressions of the sitter. The first of these was a woman (“Carol”) and the second a man (“Adrian,” who happened to be sitting across the aisle from me). This recalled Virgil Thomson’s interest in composing portraits, short pieces that would capture the spirit of friends and colleagues, realized, over the years, through a diversity of approaches to instrumentation.

Corea’s approach turned out to be an interesting one. It did, indeed, provide a means for him to get beyond his business-as-usual tropes. By focusing on the visual, mind could direct the hands into less familiar regions. Mind you, the resulting portraits were not necessarily “representational;” but the same could be said of Thomson’s compositions. The exercise also may have reflected aspects of Corea’s work practices that might not have been evident from his less spontaneous work.

The portraits were then followed by two brief duo improvisations involving volunteers from the audience. Again, one of these was male and the other female, although this time Corea did not ask their first names. Both of them had, at the very least, a solid foundation in keyboard technique; but they also rose to the occasion with give-and-take exchanges of motifs that would then merge into four-hand playing as each pianist knew what to expect of the other.

Corea’s original compositions included excerpts from his Children’s Songs collection and “The Yellow Nimbus.” He saved “Spain” for his encore. He explained that he had been drawn to the music through Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain album (I liked his mentioning Evans before Davis), particularly the setting of the second (Adagio) movement of Joaquín Rodrigo’s guitar concerto, “Concierto de Aranjuez.” He confessed that he only got to know the Rodrigo original after becoming very familiar with the Evans arrangement, but last night he told the audience that he would pay more attention to Rodrigo!

That conclusion reflected back on the composers he had explored during the first half. Those aforementioned “couplings” were more reflections of personal taste than explorations of similarities or differences across the classical and jazz domains. The first of the three paired Mozart with George Gershwin, beginning with the second movement of the K. 332 piano sonata in F major and sliding into “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Corea did not focus on playing Mozart “by the book;” but, then, it is hard to imagine that, after Mozart had committed K. 332 to writing, he would not have continued to tweak the music in imaginative ways while playing it. Suffice it to say that the two composers on his “pairing” met on playfully imaginative ground.

The second pairing was a bit more adventurous. The classical composer was Alexander Scriabin, represented by the fourth (E minor) prelude from the Opus 11 collection of 24 covering all major and minor keys. He was paired with Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debbie.” This was more of a “free association” coupling, using both compositions as points of departure. (It did not take long to recognize that the Evans selection was not being played with a waltz rhythm!) Those who thought that Scriabin may have been a bit too arcane for this exercise would do well to recall that the C-sharp minor prelude from the Opus 9 collection of pieces for the left hand was given a thoroughly engaging interpretation by the Art Farmer Quintet on their You Make Me Smile album.

The final pairing coupled Domenico Scarlatti’s K. 9 sonata in D minor with “Desafinado” by Antônio Carlos Jobim. This might seem a bit unlikely. However, while Scarlatti was born in Italy, much of his professional life (probably including his work on his 555 keyboard sonatas) was spent in Portugal and Spain. Corea made a somewhat cryptic observation that he could not believe that Scarlatti had written his sonatas for harpsichord, but he was probably just being playful. (I have no idea what Jobim’s preferences were in pianos.)

As the reader is probably aware by now, Corea’s concert turned out to be a long evening. Also, the sprit of Thelonious Monk never arrived. Nevertheless, the program was thoroughly engaging; and I doubt that anyone was checking the clock as Corea’s imaginative performances unfolded.

Wayne Wallace’s Inventions Reach beyond Latin

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

The beginning of this month saw the release of The Rhythm of Invention by the Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet. Trombonist Wallace leads a rhythm section consisting of Murray Low on piano, David Belove on bass, and Colin Douglas and Michael Spiro on percussion. As on Wallace’s previous release, Canto América, resources have been extended to the scale of a chamber orchestra of winds, brass, and strings, along Akida Thomas narrating his own text in the title track, which also includes the recorded voice of Wallace’s colleague and mentor, David Baker.

While Latin is not my favorite genre, I continue to be impressed by the imaginative ways in which those skilled in the style can take innovative approaches to tunes appropriated from other genres, particularly those of past jazz traditions. I therefore have to confess that what drew me to this album was the track of Bix Beiderbecke’s “In a Mist.” Before the “digital age,” this used to be the Great White Whale of record collectors, since about the only version available was the original ten-inch 78 RPM single. The most-told story about this item was that anyone who possessed it dared not play it for fear of wearing down the content in the groove.

All of that iconic status dissolved once the Beiderbecke discography was digitized. My own source was The Complete Bix Beiderbecke in Chronological Order, a nine-CD collection released by I.R.D. Records based in Italy. Since I now had an artifact that I could play (rather than merely show off to others), I was particularly struck to discover that, while he was best known as a trumpeter, “In a Mist” was a solo piano performance by Beiderbecke. Furthermore, considering that the recording was made in October of 1927, it was far from any ordinary piano solo of the time. Indeed, it would not be out of the question to assert that some of the earliest rumblings of bebop can be found in “In a Mist.” As a result, I was not surprised to read Wallace’s claim that it took him eight years to figure out how to arrange the piece for his group.

Indeed, what impresses me most about Wallace is how much effort he puts into seeking out and then realizing so many diverse approaches to invention. Shaping a Latin feel for rhythm around the quintuple time signature for Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” would not have been an easy matter; but, as had been the case with “In a Mist,” Wallace figured out how to chart just the right path to frame Desmond’s off-beat tune in a setting of Latin rhythms. Even more impressive, however, was the track “So Softly.”

This is one of those ingenious exercises through which the listener is allowed to discover one tune lurking in another. Through her scat singing, Ella Fitzgerald disclosed how the harmonies of Morgan Lewis’ “How High the Moon” formed the backbone of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.” Charles Mingus let another genie out of the bottle when he revealed that the favorite bebop introduction to Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are” was actually the opening four notes of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s famous C-sharp minor prelude, the second in his Opus 3 Morceaux de fantaisie collection. In a similar manner Wallace takes the introductory passage that Gil Evans wrote for Miles Davis’ tune “So What” on his Kind of Blue album and lets that introduction lead into Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” calling the resulting track “So Softly.”

Where Wallace’s own Latin tunes are concerned, what is most interesting is how he keeps taking different approaches to extending his quintet with additional instruments. Wallace is a San Francisco native; and it is more than a little disappointing that, where pedagogy is concerned, we have lost him to the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Considering the wealth of innovative music-makers here in San Francisco, it is a pity that they cannot be guided by the “pole star” of Wallace’s combination of disciplined technique with a prodigious capacity for invention.

Gil Evans’ Sons Honor Father’s Legacy

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

It would probably be fair to say that Gil Evans was the first jazzman whose work persuaded me that I should be listening to jazz as seriously as I listened to classical music. The summer following my sophomore year in high school, I got to participate in a course in microbiology organized for high school students at La Salle University in Philadelphia. When we were not working in the laboratory, we had access to a student common room that happened to have a record player and a modest collection of recordings. One of those recordings was Sketches of Spain, and I was hooked from the opening measures of the first track. Only very much later did I learn that the track involved an arrangement of the second movement of a guitar concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo; and I think it was not until my freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that I came to appreciate that the arrangement was by Gil Evans. (By that time my listening had expanded to include not only Miles Davis but also Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.)

At the end of this week, Bopper Spock Suns Music will release the first of three albums conceived as a tribute to Evans’ legacy as both an arranger and a composer. The project is a joint effort of Evans’ two sons, Noah and Miles (the latter named after you-know-who); and the collective title of the albums is The Gil Evans Orchestra – Hidden Treasures. The title of the first album is Monday Nights; and it is named for the Monday Night Orchestra that Evans began to lead at the Greenwich Village club Sweet Basil in 1983. My guess is that these gigs served as an affectionate nod to The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, which had been giving Monday night concerts at the Village Vanguard since 1965. As might be expected, Amazon.com currently has a Web page that is processing pre-orders for this new release.

The album presents two original Evans compositions and one significant arrangement. The more substantial of the originals is “Eleven.” This was composed jointly with Davis and originally appeared under the title “Petits Machins” (little stuff) on the latter’s 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro, which means that it can also be found in the six-CD collection Miles Davis Quintet, 1965–’68. As might be expected, the trumpet work on this track is taken by “the other Miles.” “Eleven” is preceded by the much shorter “Moonstruck,” which serves up a taste of Evans’ whimsical side. The significant arrangement is of “Lunar Eclipse,” composed by the eclectic Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, with a nod to Kikuchi’s own piano work taken by Gil Goldstein, introduced by some aggressive drumming from Kenwood Dennard.

Like his namesake, Miles Evans is also a trumpeter and contributes to all tracks of the album. He is also the composer of the second track, “LL Funk,” another platform for a powerful beat from Dennard. The other two tracks are also compositions by members of the orchestra. The album opens with “Subway” by keyboardist Pete Levin; and “LL Funk” is followed by “I Surrender,” composed jointly by Delmar Brown on synthesizer and saxophonist Alex Forster.

In the context of my own listening experiences, I found this album to be a thoroughly engaging examination of how a significant era of past jazz history can continue to resonate in the immediate present. The album does not account for the full extent of Evans’ eclecticism, but there is no way that any single album can do that. However, the impact that this new release has had on me now has me curious about what Evans’ sons will be offering in the two remaining albums of their project.

Keeping Good Company

I have a trumpet-playing friend who has not been shy about informing me of his dislike for Miles Davis. This has not impeded our conversations; but it does lead me to reflect, from time to time, over whether or not he has some good points to make. Ironically, the last time we had one of our exchanges, it came about after I had been writing about Gil Evans; and, while I would not call Davis' participation in his sessions with Evans "incidental," there are certain elements of those sessions that depend far more on Evans than they do on Davis. I found myself thinking about this "collaboration factor" this morning, while listening to some of the Columbia recordings from the sixties, such as the live recordings from Lincoln Center and the Plugged Nickel; and I realized that I was beginning to develop an appreciation of what seemed to be bothering my friend. I suppose one way of putting it is that there was a tendency on Davis' part for introspection unto an extreme that began to block out both the music itself and the richness of conversation with the rest of his quintet.

Thinking more about this tendency, I realized that, of all the recordings I had, about the only ones that really stuck with me beyond the Evans collaborations were those with John Coltrane. For all of Davis' complaints about Coltrane's solos being too long, the two tended to bring out the best in each other. Also, these interactions seem to be at their best in works that neither of them composed. I am thinking most specifically of Charlie Parker's "Ah-Leu-Cha," which is the sort of work I would single out for those looking for a first taste of both what Parker could compose and what seasoned performers like Davis and Coltrane could do with it. This is, of course, a judgment based entirely on my own highly subjective listening behavior; and some of that subjectivity may have to do with my being far more interested in where Coltrane went after the two of them broke up than I am with Davis' progress. Another possibility is that, even when Coltrane went into the direction of free jazz, bebop remained part of his worldview, while Davis moved in a direction of shedding his bebop roots, so to speak.

Back at the beginning of this year, I speculated over whether or not Peter Sellars may have had a detrimental influence on John Adams, suggesting that it may have become time for Adams to keep "better company." Davis had the good fortune to keep some really excellent company in his early years. I have to wonder how his music might have developed had he not departed from that company.

Gil Evans' Bartók Connection

That passing reference to Gil Evans while writing about Porgy and Bess reminded me that it has been a while since I did some serious listening to Evans. On the Porgy and Bess album he had the chutzpah to supplement his arrangements of George Gershwin's music with an original composition of his own, "Gone," which is far more than a paraphrase of the music for Robbins' funeral scene in Scene 2 of Act 1 of the opera. This is symptomatic of the way in which Evans could turn the work of another composer into a new and original object. This was probably most evident in the way in which he reworked the second movement of Joaquín Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," originally written for guitar and orchestra, for the Sketches of Spain album he prepared with Miles Davis. Less familiar may be "Song of our Country," recorded at the Sketches of Spain sessions but not released on the original Columbia vinyl. The title is the English translation of the subtitle of the second movement of the second of Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras suites ("O Canto de Nossa Terra"); and Villa-Lobos is far better served by Evans' treatment than he ever was by the overabundance of hack adaptations (anyone remember Johnny Mathis?) of the aria from the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras suite.

More surprising, however, is when Evans moved away from Spain and Brazil and turned to Béla Bartók. This is a more subtle (if not downright concealed) adaptation, since it resides in the introduction to his arrangement of the tune by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, "Wait Till You See Her." The source comes from the introduction to the first movement of Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra." Hopefully, one of these days some capable graduate student will get around to writing a thesis on Bartók's influence on jazz in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Given Evans' extensive literacy, finding that influence in his music is no surprise. More surprising may be accounts that John Coltrane used to practice by playing along with the opening measures of that same Bartók composition, which may well be where he got his idea for "Giant Steps." At the same time we find piano solos by Mose Allison with a strong Bartók influence (which I was able to confirm through a conversation with Allison "back in the day"). The middle of the twentieth century was an exciting time for both making and listening to music. Gil Evans was a champion of that time; and the recordings he influenced, both directly and indirectly, constitute a valuable legacy.