May 24--When the revered saxophonist-composer Wayne Shorter leads his long-standing quartet, no one knows exactly where the music is headed -- including the musicians.
For Shorter -- composer of jazz classics such as "Footprints," "E.S.P." and "Nefertiti" -- encourages his colleagues to pursue the free-flowing improvisational style that long ago established him as a singular figure in American music. Seemingly unafraid to pursue a phrase or a rhythm or a chord progression wherever it leads him, Shorter makes music that often sounds as if it's airborne, floating across bar lines and beyond listener expectations.
In the company of pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, Shorter has taken remarkable flights into the unexpected.
"They're so open," says Shorter, 82, speaking of the musicians who will play Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center with him on Friday night.
"They have a grasp of what we call the mission, and the mission is so wide open that we say there's no such thing as a mistake, there's no such thing as an interruption.
"When someone is playing, and someone else cuts across, someone is saying something to me. It's not an interruption, it's an opportunity."
Shorter does not exaggerate; the exchange of ideas among him and his partners is impossible to script before a performance or to put down on score paper afterward. Western musical notation simply does not have tools to express this degree of rhythmic flexibility, inflection of pitch and mercurial change of texture.
This music happens in the moment, the instrumentalists deeply conversant with the grammar of jazz but free to transcend it.
"The rules and regulations kind of exist, in the sense that we know what salt is because pepper exists -- and then you're going to find out there's oregano and all that," says Shorter.
In other words, because everyone knows the rules of the game, all are free to break them or to invent new ones.
"There's nothing actually rehearsed at all," adds Shorter. "We will do things sometimes that's written, but what's written is a reminder for us to not play what's there.
"Sometimes when we're improvising, at the end of a concert someone will say: Can I get the score of that long piece that you played? No, it was improvised."
Yet the melodic currents of Shorter's tenor and soprano saxophone lines, the impressionistic colors of Perez's pianism, the buoyancy of Patitucci's bass playing and the rhythmic disruptions of Blade's drum work tell a coherent -- if ever-shifting -- story. You just have to listen closely.
What's it like to try to work in Shorter's orbit?
"A life-changing experience," writes Perez in an email. "I have found a family in this group, a second father and a mentor for life.
"I have learned that life starts at the end of my comfort zone and that everything we do in music is a reflection of life. I learned that I can write and play music with the desire to bring hope to this world."
Indeed, there's a profoundly humanistic message in Shorter's music, whether in this quartet, in his famously ethereal duets with pianist Herbie Hancock, in his expansive solos and, especially, in his compositions, which say a great deal in a few well-chosen notes. Shorter's stream-of-consciousness approach to performance is fraught with risk, though he clearly wouldn't have it any other way.
"I don't practice," Shorter says forthrightly when asked about his rehearsal regimen. "I don't want to have the muscle memory of what I practice dictate what I'm going to do at the next concert."
Or, to be more precise, Shorter practices away from the instrument, in his imagination.
"There's a lot of thinking stories in the head, or wherever it is," says Shorter. "It's painting as you're going to sleep, and you have those dreams that you're flying.
"When I was a kid, I had dreams that I was flying through the universe, and there were all these colors that you haven't seen. And you kind of remember that stuff, and you want to see if you can approach that (on stage).
"Not planning to, but while you're playing, that thought comes into view, and you say: Wow. And with four people, there's this desire to find more about what life is, beyond all our senses."
When he's at his best, Shorter conveys that dream-state through music, his solos and ensemble interchanges rooted in his copious experiences with Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Weather Report and so much more, but liberated from conventional song structures.
Perez puts it this way: "Wayne is from another galaxy, and he is always in touch with his inner child."
Shorter, adds Perez, is "a master of the unexpected."
Along those lines, Shorter allows that he's in the midst of creating an opera with bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia.
How would Shorter describe the music he has composed thus far?
"Unpredictable," he says. "I promise you, no one will go to sleep."
That I believe.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
hreich@tribpub.com
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave.
Tickets: $38-$75; 312-294-3000 or www.cso.org
