This caused minor concern among fans leading up to the show on Tuesday. It isnt that Mr. Shorter, probably jazzs greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser, shouldnt be going outside his territory; the lessons of 20th-century classical music have become inseparable from his composing.
Its that his territory is so good. There exists a generalized what more can be done? crisis of confidence about the small group in jazz, but Mr. Shorters quartet, formed in 2000, is nearly magnificent enough to ease it. With the pianist Danilo Perez, the bassist John Patitucci, the drummer Brian Blade and Mr. Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophones, the band has been settling into performances full of articulated mystery. They dont stop between songs, they keep melodies obscured through harmony thats constantly flowing, and they allow breathing room for everyone, almost rendering obsolete the old notions of jazz architecture solos, backgrounds, vamps, bridges and so on. Why would you want anything to get in the way of that?
Heres how things turned out for the best. Imani Winds appeared first, playing Heitor Villa-Loboss Quinteto em Forma de Choros and then a piece written by Mr. Shorter, Terra Incognita. (Its world premiere was two years ago, at the La Jolla Music Societys Summerfest.) A bit longer than 10 minutes, it was concise and dynamic, with small openings for the players individual expressions; it was polytonal and harmonically wide, and in stretches nearly every note fanned out into a chord.
This was top-to-bottom classical music, and it was good to hear it first. It started the jazz listener off in a foreign place, and the rest of the show gradually melted into something resembling more common expectations. But what followed, after the stagehands removed the music stands and the wind players left, was not common at all: an unbroken 30 minutes of Mr. Shorters quartet playing a totally credible merger of jazz and modern classical.
