To start off the new year in style, this week we have a fantastic long medley from the Wayne Shorter Quartet late last year. Shorter will celebrate his 80th birthday this year with a number of interesting collaborations between the Quartet and chamber music groups, along with a new live album due out at the beginning of February, a follow up to Footprints Live! and Beyond the Sound Barrier.
The Quartet, featuring Danilo Perez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blades on drums, has been together for over a decade and has long since moved beyond playing “songs” per se, favoring a type of dramatic free form improvisation that is beautiful and captivating; I call their music spontaneous scoring, in a nod to Shorter’s well known love of film and film scores–there‘s always a story being told when the Quartet begins to weave its spell. This particular 45 minutes of music is especially groovy early on and absolutely stunning at its apex just before it ends. Happy New Year, and as always, enjoy!
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Thanks! Do you know date or location for this?
This is a broadcast of 11/4/12 in Berlin. There’s another 20 minutes suite that follows and a tight five minute Joy Ryder encore that completes the show.