Perhaps no living composer has loomed so large in jazz during the past 35 years as Wayne Shorter.
The harmonic sophistication and melodic originality of his compositions have given jazz musicians more than just a bulging repertory of first-rate tunes. Shorter’s distinctive musical language has pointed the way for musicians uninterested in the well-worn bebop techniques of the past and the “free jazz” experiments of the ’60s and thereafter.
So the newly expanded jazz institution that made its bow here over the weekend hardly could have conceived a more enticing program than “The Music of Wayne Shorter.” Though it would take several weeks to dig beyond the surface of Shorter’s seemingly bottomless oeuvre, Saturday night’s marathon performance at least gave an overflow crowd state-of-the-art readings of some of Shorter’s best work.
The occasion was the debut of the SFJAZZ Spring Season, a five-weekend series of concerts, family events and film screenings designed to build upon the success of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival, which takes place each fall. By expanding into another time of year and appointing tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman as Spring Season artistic director, the folks who built the San Francisco Jazz Festival into a national powerhouse have taken the first major steps toward creating a year-round jazz institution.
Ultimately, the only important gauge of such a venture is the quality of the musicmaking, and in this regard the 3-hour show in the Masonic Auditorium often exceeded expectations.
Shorter opened the evening sublimely, leading a group of younger players in a sweeping traversal of famous and obscure originals. That Japanese trumpeter Shunzo Omo, Latin percussionist Alex Acuna, African-American drummer Brian Blade and others should prove so persuasive in this repertoire pointed to the profound influence that Shorter’s work has had on musicians of multiple generations and ethnicities.
Though the casual listener might have found the work of the Shorter sextet somewhat muted, there was no resisting the underlying spirituality of the composer’s improvisations on tenor and soprano saxophones, as well as the empathetic accompaniments of the classically trained pianist Helen Sung.
Yet Shorter’s music lends itself to infinite possibilities, including the more viscerally exciting approach of an all-star tribute band assembled for this evening and fronted by reedists Redman, Branford Marsalis and Joe Lovano.
The radiant three-part harmony they improvised on Shorter’s “Speak No Evil,” the antiphonal effects that Redman and Marsalis achieved on “Deluge” and the haunting, supremely expressive lyricism that Lovano and pianist Brad Mehldau attained on “Infant Eyes” attested to the stylistic breadth that Shorter’s music encompasses.
And when Shorter himself joined the three reedists on “Footprints,” the classic tune cried out with a fervor it does not often receive.
The night before, tenor saxophonist Redman opened the weekend’s festivities with an audacious and rewarding performance in Grace Cathedral, the same glorious space where Duke Ellington unveiled his Sacred Concert in 1965.
Though the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling and ornate architecture make for stunning visuals, the wide-open space can be hazardous for unwitting musicians: The palapable echo that makes a church choir sound so grandiose can wreak havoc with instrumentals.
As if the acoustical challenge weren’t enough, Redman undertook to play a solo concert, his lone saxophone carrying the full weight of the evening’s musicmaking. To his credit, Redman not only held his listeners transfixed with a dramatic, de facto history of the tenor saxophone but an ingenious use of a potentially problematic space.
Clever showman that he is, Redman began playing offstage, his big, beefy sound preceding him. To hear Redman’s plush, steeped-in-blue phrases rumbling through the cathedral even before he could be seen was to realize that Redman knew exactly what he was doing.
Sure enough, by the time Redman reached stage center, he had finished his bluesy intro and launched into the famous opening phrase of “Body and Soul.” His transformation of a jazz standard most famously recorded by Coleman Hawkins paid homage to an early codifier of the romantic tenor vocabulary while embracing up-to-date reed techniques.
Moreover, Redman took pains to pause between phrases, allowing long-held notes to resonate freely throughout the sanctuary. Redman’s solos may have been less intricate and rhythmically impulsive than one has come to expect from him, but he used the reverberant character of this room to his advantage.
In all, an auspicious beginning for a boldly expanding SFJAZZ.
