eMusic Review 0
Seven months away from his 80th birthday, the greatest living composer in jazz has released his first record in eight years. Wayne Shorter’s Without A Net features eight live songs from a 2011 European tour with his longstanding quartet, along with a more recent 23-minute, chamber-styled tone poem, also live, with the five-piece Imani Winds abetting the regular ensemble.
It is an event of a record, Shorter’s first for the Blue Note label in 43 years. But Without A Net is distant from such Blue Note classics as Juju and Speak No Evil in more ways than one. His preferred saxophone is now the soprano instead of the tenor, and nearly a half-century after his Blue Note albums stunned listeners with their buffed, lean, hard-bop ingenuity, Without A Net is open-ended but purposeful, alert yet accepting. It reflects the tranquil whir animating Shorter today,an elderly master of musical composition and a longtime follower of the Buddhist faith.
Without A Net contains all the Shorter verities — the harmonic sophistication, the patient song construction, the innovative probing of melodic nooks and crannies, the geometric integrity of his solos. Perhaps because Shorter isn’t fully absorbed in a few listens, I’m most favorably inclined… read more »
