David Robertson and the SLSO bring jazz legend Wayne Shorter to town
By K. Curtis Lyle
For the St. Louis American
“Do you want to be in the band?”
The voice asking the question belonged to jazz drummer Art Blakey. He sat like a monarch and stared down at Wayne Shorter. Wayne was in Canada, at the Canadian Exposition of 1959, to play a gig. It was his second time in Canada. This visit, like the first, would prove prophetic.
Some years earlier he had encountered Lester Young, the great tenor saxophonist, at the Town Tavern in Toronto. Wayne was still in the U.S. Army. He got a little vacation before his tour was up, so he went to Toronto, where Young was playing.
“I had my gangster suit on – paisley tie, pinstripe suit – and I’m trying to get to the bar,” Shorter remembered.
“Suddenly, this finger tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and looked and it was Lester Young. And he said to me, ‘You look like you’re from New York.’ His voice was real slow. And he said, ‘Whatchu drinkin?'”
When Wayne, who was drinking then, said, “Cognac,” Young took him down in the wine cellar to “get some REAL cognac.”
“As he was talking, I was getting ripped,” Wayne remembered. “We didn’t talk about music or what I played. But I was just checking him out.” After that meeting, Shorter started listening more closely to Young – his music, that is.
Now, he was in Canada again, caught in the stare of “Buhania,” Art Blakey, founder, captain and sustainer of the Jazz Messengers, one of the most important groups in the history of the music.
Blakey’s Messengers was an incubator for top jazz talent, and it appeared that Wayne was on the verge of joining. Lee Morgan, trumpeter with the group and an acknowledged prodigy – he had joined the band, full-blown, at 18 – had rushed across the race track at the fairgrounds, grabbed Wayne and shouted, “Hank didn’t make it, man. Hank didn’t make it!”
He was referring to tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, the other horn in the band. Hank hadn’t made it, for two straight dates. Lee said, “Let’s go see Buhania.”
Thus Wayne Shorter found himself, again in Canada, standing in the shadow of serendipity and prophecy.
He joined the band and became an integral member of a legendary version of the Jazz Messengers. Along with Blakey, Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymmie Merritt, Wayne began to create beautiful music. He took over as chief composer and musical director of the band. From 1959-64 he recorded 19 albums with Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
“I knew that I couldn’t write anything too filmy or ethereal. I had to write for impact,” he remembered in a National Public Radio documentary.
“We’d play the Apollo where you’d have five shows on the weekend. We had to follow all kinds of acts, I mean snake dancers and other stuff. You had to have impact.”
Shorter’s story became even more legendary in 1964, when he was called to join the band of Miles Davis. This version of Davis’ band was to become, perhaps, the most creative and successful of all his quintets. Wayne had just inherited the most sought-after saxophone chair in jazz, one that had been held by both Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane.
Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams had been hired by Davis in 1963 after the breakup of his greatest group, featuring Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans and Philly Joe Jones, legends all. Davis wanted new and younger blood; Hancock, Carter and Williams were the foundation of his new vision. Now Wayne got the call. Again, he became the musical director of the band and began to compose pieces that would change the course of the music.
“I have three favorite composers: Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and then there’s Wayne Shorter – and not necessarily in that order.” That’s Herbie Hancock speaking. Joe Zawinul, co-founder, along with Wayne, of the most important fusion band of all time, Weather Report, said, “He was humming an opera for me that he’d written when he was 17 years old. He’s never changed.” Trumpeter Dave Douglas said, “It falls outside of the categories of music. You just have to call it Wayne’s music.”
Wayne Shorter is coming here to play “Wayne’s music” with, of all ensembles, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center at UMSL on Sept. 28. New music director for SLSO David Robertson will conduct the orchesta. Robertson, who knows Shorter well, is the person most responsible for Shorter and his band coming to town.
In a phone conversation, Robertson talked about the great joy that resonates throughout Wayne’s work.
“For a musician, it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Robertson said of performing Wayne’s music. “I direct the ensemble and decide how long they improvise. What a pleasure for my musicians to get to work up-close with such a man. Wayne’s music makes everyone seem relaxed and very cool.”
Robertson has performed three times previously with Shorter and his band. First in Lyon, France, then at the Jazz Festival in Vienne, and finally in Paris. He recalled a magical moment when Danilo Perez, the band’s pianist, came running from the stage. He was so enraptured by a passage where he felt the orchestra had actually improvised that he began proclaiming, “Man, that was like a fifth member of the band. That was like having a fifth member in the band!”
Robertson said two things to me that need to be quoted:
“I’d walk to the end of the earth for Wayne.”
“He’s the kind of person who makes you happy to be a human being.”
Be there!
Wayne Shorter will perform with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center at UMSL on Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets ($20 and $30) can be purchased by calling (314) 516-4949 or (866) 516-4949, online at www.touhill.org, or at the Touhill’s box office.
