After a half-hour delay that had the room at the brink of
impatience, Trio ACS took the stage. Teri Lyne Carrington, obscured by a large
leaf-shaped cymbal, began with a flurry of activity on the kit and then settled
into a backbeat. Geri Allen began with a series of Schönberg-esque chords (h/t to Miles Okazaki for the Twitter theory lessons),
carving space in Carrington’s drum sound. Carrington integrated some early
hip-hop edginess into her time feel, and demonstrated her role as a precursor
to drummers like Chris Dave and Jamire Williams. Though the piano was low in
the mix until the closing tune, Allen’s ideas were clear. Her improvising
seemed to centre around repeated motifs and intervallic relationships, giving
her lines a forward motion. It was my first time seeing Esperanza Spalding as a
bassist only, and it was a revelation. Her solos were patient, and sounded
exactly like the melodies she composes for herself to sing. It was evident how
unified an artist she has become. Her tone, too, was remarkable – even in the
grandeur of Maisonneuve, it sounded like the sound was just coming from only
her bass, round yet focused. ACS’ approach was similar to Wayne’s – Shorter’s
indelible melodies would poke out of roiling, at times hypnotically pulsating,
improvisation.
If Trio ACS represented Wayne Shorter the improviser, Sound
Prints reflected upon Wayne Shorter the composer. This isn’t necessarily new
territory for Dave Douglas; indeed, his tune "Ups & Downs" hearkened back to the Stargazer record with his turn-of-the-millennium sextet. That
record, like the concert, featured powerhouse drummer Joey Baron. It was a
thrill to see that the hook-up between Douglas and Baron in full force after a
decade. Douglas was on fire throughout the set, with power and control throughout
all registers of the horn. He was fairly quote-happy too, throwing out nods to
“Juju,” “Footprints,” and “Epistrophy.” Baron gleefully responded to
every nuance, sometimes with sensitivity, at other times with shit-disturbing
interruptions à la Han Bennink. Joe Lovano’s tenor sound is still as
characteristically gruff and deep as I remember it. His compositions sounded as
indebted to Wayne (and Wayne’s partnerships with trumpeters like Lee Morgan and
Freddie Hubbard) as it was to the pairing of Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Bassist Linda Oh used the same instrument and
amp as Esperanza and got a totally different sound out of it – far more
electrified and almost rubbery. She was a truly captivating soloist and
entirely attuned to Baron’s playing. With two highly personal soloists up front
and the rhythmic deluge (excuse the pun) from the drums, pianist Lawrence Fields seemed to have
difficulty carving out his place in the music. Never mind the fact that he also
had the unenviable position of occupying the piano bench between Geri Allen and
Danilo Perez! He has tremendous facility on the instrument – the final passage
of his solo in Douglas’ “Sprints” ended with some fantastic locked octaves –
and he played some truly moving blues, but his comping often got lost.
The notebook got put away during intermission. Wayne’s
current quartet, more than a decade into it, is exceedingly difficult to write
about in the moment. I wanted to be present in that moment and not scribbling away on a pad,
anyway. The Quartet creates an endlessly changing quilt of sound, with
responsiveness that borders on telepathy. As the band took the stage, someone in
the audience initiated a singalong of the traditional French Québécois birthday
song (“mon cher ami, c’est à ton tour de
te laisser parler amour”), which the trio of Danilo Perez, Brian Blade and
John Patitucci seized upon. It set the mood for the Quartet’s entire set, and
in a way let the audience into the process of how the band transforms melodic
ideas. Compared to last year, Wayne played way more saxophone. I would say he
split time equally between tenor and soprano, and his sound on both was far
fuller and consistent than the previous year. He began with short, darting
declarations and worked his way to more involved passages. The final climax of the
set was so intense – Perez hammering dissonant chords at maximum volume, Blade
addressing his kit with such ferocity the bass drum skidded out by two feet – I
felt something physically shift inside me, and I was vibrating for nearly an
hour after the set ended. Due to Blade’s physicality, the playfully funky
encore of “S.S. Golden Mean” was marred a bit by various microphone glitches.
No matter – the music spoke far above the technical issues. As he celebrates
his 80th birthday, Shorter is still every bit the “weather man,” as
Joe Lovano called him. “He lets you know what’s happening and he can predict
the future.”
