Jazz Articles about Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter: The Soothsayer

by Joel Roberts
December 11, 2008

Wayne Shorter was setting the jazz world on fire at the time of this 1965 Blue Note session, now available as part of the Rudy van Gelder remaster series. The tenor saxophonist had just joined Miles Davis' quintet, with whom he'd go on to make six classic albums, and he'd recently released a milestone album of his own, 1964's Speak No Evil (Blue Note). The Soothsayer finds Shorter in the company of such stellar contemporaries as bassist ...

Wayne Shorter: The Soothsayer

by Chris May
April 14, 2008

A good month for tenor saxophone connoisseurs, April 2008, with a second Rudy Van Gelder re-master released alongside Ike Quebec's signature Blue & Sentimental (Blue Note, 2008). The Soothsayer may be comparably less of a benchmark in Wayne Shorter's discography, and remains to some extent overshadowed by its close contemporary Speak No Evil (Blue Note, 1964), but it's a solid and enduring album--despite 15 years between the recording session and the original LP release.

Things were ...

Herbie Hancock: River: The Joni Letters

by George Kanzler
March 6, 2008

The participation of such former and present Grammy nominees and winners as Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza and Leonard Cohen (reading “The Jungle Line" like a beat poet), as well as the iconic stature of Joni Mitchell herself, may have immeasurably helped in winning this CD the Grammy Album of the Year award. But that doesn't diminish the significance of it being the first jazz album to win the award in forty-three years. For make no ...

Herbie Hancock: River: The Joni Letters

by John Kelman
October 11, 2007

While it might be easy, on the surface, to view pianist Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters as a continuation of Possibilities (Hear, 2005), nothing could be further from the truth. Possibilities was an unapologetically pop record; River is unequivocally jazz--although such broad classifications shouldn't matter. River is, quite simply, a superb disc that takes Joni Mitchell's extant jazz proclivities and gives them an even greater interpretive boost. The majority of River is culled from Mitchell's “classic" songwriting ...

Lee Morgan: The Gigolo

by Samuel Chell
February 26, 2007

Lee Morgan The Gigolo Blue Note Records 2007

As we observe the 35th anniversary (Feb. 19) of the death of the talented trumpeter who would also become the major player in one of American music's more noteworthy Frankie and Johnny stories, the title of this Lee Morgan session and several others (The Tom Cat, The Rajah, The Procrastinator) take on a note of eponymous self-characterization, if not ghoulishly ironic subtext. Regrettable or not, the ...

Wayne Shorter: Great Sessions

by Chris May
April 18, 2006

Blue Note is adept at finding fresh ways of repackaging its back catalogue--the label has to be, because in not so many years time, every dodgy operator on the planet will be able to punt the music out, in any permutation they fancy, unconstrained by copyright restrictions. Blue Note Europe's new Great Sessions series is a particularly attractive idea. Each set slipcases together three more or less consecutive albums, almost all of them in audio-enhanced RVG editions, at a budget ...

Wayne Shorter Quartet / Brad Mehldau at Massey Hall in Toronto

by Brenton Plourde
April 18, 2006

Wayne Shorter Quartet / Brad Mehdlau Massey Hall Toronto, Canada April 5, 2006 Toronto's Massey Hall has seen it all. From rock concerts to classical to typing contests and chess tournaments, Massey Hall is as diverse as any place in Canada and possibly around the world since it first brick was laid in 1893. On April 5th, The Wayne Shorter Quartet along with Brad Mehldau for one night took over ...