Saxophonist Wayne Shorter is one of the most significant jazz performers of modern times. He performed as part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and then Miles Davis' band in the sixties before co-founding Weather Report with Joe Zawinul in the early seventies.
Since that time he has gone on to forge a formidable solo career as well as working with some of his long-time colleagues such as Herbie Hancock. He has also contributed to albums by rock musicians such as Joni Mitchell and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.
Shorter is visiting Australia and appears in Melbourne (Friday March 5), Adelaide (Saturday March 6) and Sydney (Sunday March 7)
Brian Wise caught up with Shorter to talk about his career. Here is the transcript of the interview.
So, have you been doing many gigs recently, in recent weeks? What have you been up to?
I’ve actually been writing a lot of music, I’ve been writing for orchestra.
And is that for a particular project that you’ve been commissioned to do?
Yes, a couple of things, but it’s a long process and we just finished. Last week we played as a group in Guadalajara in Mexico.
I assume that was with your quartet.
Yes, it was a combination of the concerts. Those were the things that were going on there but also it’s the site of the second largest Book Fair in the world.
That would have been pretty interesting?
Yeah, the mayor or Los Angeles was there and all that and the mayor of Guadalajara and all that.
And where did the music fit into the book fair?
Well, actually, they have the whole cultural theme going and that’s almost encouraging people to read. They had several stages where there were different things going on. They had the rock n roll, pop and everything but we played what you call the jazz portion and it was very well received. Whole, whole lot of young people
Right. I assume this would have been with the quartet you’re bringing to Australia with you, is that right?
It’s the same group.
Tell us about the musicians because it’s a fantastic combo.
They are all involved in life and living and not only wrapped up in their profession and music. For instance, the pianist, Danilo Perez, has a foundation in Panama – and it’s all designed to bring out talented young people or people with talented gifts. He’s gotten 9 kids out of isolated areas in Panama. And gotten them four year scholarships and Berklee and the New England Conservatory and even other regular academic colleges.
Also he’s working on this whole thing called ‘jungle wood.’ They’re preserving, working on all kinds of projects to preserve…. that whole trail where there’s a whole migration trail, back and forth. Many of the different species of animals that travel between North America and South America and beyond, and keeping all that together. Even Jane Goodall is involved with them.
So that’s what it is with all these people and the environment. And John Pattituci he’s a professor, he teaches at city college in New York city – according to his own schedule though. Yes, because Ron Carter used to do that for years… it used to be Professor Carter, now it’s Professor Pattituci.
The drummer, Brian Blade has his own band - they all have their own band. Brian Blade has an outstanding band and I think you have his first record where he’s singing but they all have their eyes on the wider view of life and not just blinders on as a me and my music kind of thing you know.
It must be exciting for you not only to play with those musicians but to be with them too?
Oh yeah, it’s a whole group that’s built on continuation of what some call trust. We have no time for silly things and things that are disruptive to unity and all that. Most of the guys they’ve all got families and they’re adults but we don’t forget the feeling of being useful.
The things that you wish for in your youth - don’t throw them away: the things you wanted to do, how you wanted to be. We don’t start walking around like an old man, grumpy and sour and angry.
Well, you certainly don’t sound that way.
No, I’ve got no time for it, everything counts now.
One of the things that we’ve recently seen from you is the DVD Live At Montreux which is series of performances from 1996 and there a couple of other years as well that are included. You’ve been lucky to work with some great people but Montreux must be a very special experience for a jazz musician.
Well, I’ve been doing Montreux since 1959, since I was a kid almost, when I got out of the army I went with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Montreux was one of the first places we did in 1959.
It started out as a jazz venue like the real McCoy kind of thing then it expanded into all the other areas of musical expression, many other areas, and all that people think of it as kind of a resort. When they do their thing in July it’s like that but the heart of it started out as a creative jazz, creative music, creative anything.
Those performances also featured Herbie Hancock, who we last saw you here with in Australia and you too have been intertwined in your careers for how long now? Well over 40 years, isn’t it?
Yeah, Herbie was here last night …with quite a few people. We live really close, really nearby each other and certain events we do. We meet at certain points during the week as a family kind of, and other families too .
In concert - and you can see that on the DVD - it’s like you sort of share some ESP or something.
Yeah, we do have quite a few things to get out in the public from the 1+1 album that we did - the duet album. There’s the possibility of expanding some of that music for orchestra but we’ll see, it’ll take some time and some doing but we’ll see.
You don’t sound as though you’re slowing down at all
No, when you get older time starts to move faster. It’s like it’s time to go to sleep, it’s time to get up and it’s time to do this and that.
Do you know that it is the 40th anniversary of the release of In A Silent Way?
Oh yeah? That’s nice
It’s incredible isn’t it?
That’s a nice thing. Let’s hear it for the advancement of creativity and let’s have an applause. They have these applauses like Golden Globes and Grammys but moving ahead with the painters and poets and musicians and really great writers and film writers, directors and all that really …..I would say from the independent film-maker and novelists.
Talking about moving ahead, you’ve worked with some visionary people over your career, haven’t you? Herbie’s one. You mentioned Art Blakey and there’s a whole list of people, not just in jazz music but in rock music as well who have been quite visionary, haven’t they?
Oh yeah, like one of the guys when they did the album called Aja?
Steely Dan - Becker and Fagen
Yeah, they were really on to something, some really nice stuff. And there’s people I might never have played with like Dizzy Gillespie: he’s been in my grasp of what he is about. I never played with Charlie Parker but I saw Charlie Parker live about 5 times when I was 15, I was not even into music then.
And Miles Davis! Hey, working with Miles Davis and then meeting some people. As time goes by you get to see and meet some of the descendants of some of the historical people and this is what travelling around and doing music gives some of the gypsy artists. This is Tolstoy’s great-great-great-great granddaughter or something like that.
Well, you’ve certainly been lucky to work with some of those people over the years. You mentioned Miles Davis and there’s Joe Zawinul who, unfortunately, recently passed away. You’ve surrounded yourself with those people throughout the years, haven’t you? Have you deliberately sought them out or have they sought you out?
Well, we were all friends, we knew about the same kind of mission. Art Blakey would always talk about the jazz messengers having a ‘mission.’ Art used that word mission a lot. But knowing Herbie and them all, we all knew what we were up against. We knew we were up against some certain type of resistance of recording companies: there was resistance to play music that was unfamiliar. They would tell people it was hard to sell, hard to market. They said it was hard to market.
But I know that resistance is a welcoming element now. I’m wise enough now to know that resistance is what is needed to grow, like a plane needs resistance to take off. So, I don’t go around blaming record companies and CEOs for not doing as much with jazz as they do for what they call ‘easy access’ music. So I don’t blame them, I just say thanks for giving me the fuel I need to grow. We find it’s a miracle when you find ways to do what you need to do: what you know you got to do without their financial backing so they don’t have anything holding over you, like you owe me this or you owe me that, they only have to know that they are accomplices in the creative process.
One of the names I left out when we talking was John Coltrane who was obviously pretty important in your life too.
Oh yeah. John. We had some fun together. Trane and Monk. Igor Stravinsky - I saw him conduct when I was 18 years old at a centre in New York.
A lot of people look at me strange when I say [about] Mozart, [that] one of his G minor symphonies is a jazz kind of symphony. They look at me but whenever I hear it, the g-minor, the beat is a jazz symbol beat, it’s jazz. In his way Amadeus was talking about freedom. Of course, the word jazz means to me to dare to go forward, to get there to crash through artificial notions of what is supposed to be.
I like what Sonny Rollins said. He said we weren’t playing be-bop or jazz because we wanted to be great, great executioners, great soloists, great musicians, we were playing what we call modern music or be-bop because we wanted to be human and when you’re human nobody is meant to be standing in the recording studio telling you what to play! Our people know that stuff, it’s like what’s happening now, we’re making music in their garages and they’re homes and iTunes, iPods and everything.
What can we expect for you to play for us on the Australian tour, I think when you were with Herbie the other year, you played a little excerpt of In A Silent Way, didn’t you?
I think we did, in fact the last time I played it I was with Joe Zawinul about 3 or 4 weeks before he passed away. I walked up to him on the stage. I was behind him and he didn’t know I was there and I stood beside him. He turned around and we played the first part, the first verse part of ‘In A Silent Way,’ just he and I playing that first verse without any drum beats.
We walked in there, they were playing ‘In A Silent Way,’ the blues part the swinging part really fast. He had evolved to stretching it that kind of way. So when I stood next to him we didn’t even say anything, he just smiled and looked at each other and went right into the introduction and that’s the part of ‘In A Silent Way’ we talked about when Joe was writing it and recording it. He said that’s the part that reminded him of his grandparents. I said all grandparents, all out there in the pastures or the woods, the Vienna woods or whatever country you live in and your grandparents out there making a way for their grandchildren before they leave. That’s what that’s about and we did it, we had our last conversation together right there.
Well, he’s sadly missed isn’t he?
Oh yeah. I was at his house before that, we shared watching some boxing together and some other things together we shared. We talked about Heddy Lamar, she was a genius. You know the movie Enigma - it’s a movie about a submarine code that the Germans could not decode, what the English or the Allies were doing. Well, Heddy Lamar invented it. A decoding device and they made a movie about with Martin Sheen played in it, it’s a good movie. The enigma was that machine that she invented and they gave her a medal for it too.