JAZZTIMES.COM 21member going to concerts with him to play with his quintet,
and people would show up just to see if he played one salsa
tune. [Laughs] So it’s great to hear him on this.
- Wayne Shorter Quartet
“Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean” (Emanon, Blue Note).
Shorter, soprano saxophone; Danilo Pérez, piano; John Patitucci,
bass; Brian Blade, drums. Recorded in 2016.
BEFORE: This is Wayne. Yeah. He has such a personal sound
on the soprano. I’ve seen this band a few times. I wanna say
probably six or seven times. And every time it’s different.
Obviously that’s what they’re trying to do, but you know,
sometimes I feel like I’m really connected and other times
I’m less connected. It depends on the night. It depends on
what they do. It’s a brave thing just to jump out there and
see what happens. But I have to say, every time I’ve seen
the band, even the last time I saw them play—which was
recently, I wanna say a year and a half ago—Wayne sounded
amazing. Like mind-blowing good. And his thing has
always been so organic and so of the moment, even from
the get-go. He’s one of the great composers in the history
of American music, but as a player he’s always been such a
fresh improviser.
You’re close with the pianist in this group, Danilo Pérez, right?
I’m very close with Danilo. I remember growing up in
Puerto Rico and gravitating toward his music immediately.
He was balancing things out the way I wanted to hear them,
in terms of the jazz world and the Latin-American stuff. So
I sought him out when I moved to the States. I remember he
was playing a concert, and as soon as the concert was over, I
jumped onstage, and I was like, “Hey, my name is such and
such, I’m such a big fan,” and he was so welcoming. He was
like, “Man, you know, here’s my number, call me, you can
come over any time.” And he became my mentor.
- Kamasi Washington
“Hub-Tones” (Heaven and Earth, Young Turks). Washington, tenor
saxophone; Dontae Winslow, trumpet; Ryan Porter, trombone;
Cameron Graves, piano; Brandon Coleman, keyboards, organ, vo-
coder; Miles Mosely, bass; Ronald Bruner, Jr., Tony Austin, drums;
Allakoi Peete, Kahlil Cummings, percussion. Recorded in 2017.
BEFORE: [Piano comes in] This is kind of what I was talking
about before when I was talking about Fabian—it’s the
same conception. Ahhh. [Mouths melody as horns enter] It’s
Freddie [Hubbard, the tune’s composer]. This is definitely
younger guys. Might be a Latin-American musician. Maybe
this is his conception. It’s funny, the way it’s recorded there’s
all this reverb on the mix. And on the trumpet, too, now. It’s
kind of like electric Miles. My guess is that this is the piano
player’s record, just by listening to it.
AFTER: I’m not familiar with his playing at all. I’ve heard
things here and there, but I wouldn’t have been able to
guess. At first I was like, okay, so maybe, he’s playing some
Coltrane things and some little runs that were similar to this
thing, or this Michael Brecker lick he’s playing there. But
the stuff that I’ve heard is kind of like this. It’s cool, it’s very
vampy, and has a vibe. It’s a cyclical thing where the same
thing repeats over and over and you build on it in layers. But
it’s not really the kind of thing that I would listen to.- Eric Dolphy
“Fire Waltz” (At the Five Spot, New Jazz). Eric Dolphy, alto saxo-
phone; Booker Little, trumpet; Mal Waldron, piano; Richard Davis,
bass; Ed Blackwell, drums. Recorded in 1961.
BEFORE: [Immediately, whistles along with melody] This
is Eric Dolphy. Is it “Fire Waltz”? This is one of those
groups, especially of late—I would say in the last 20 years
or so—that a lot of musicians have started jumping on. A
lot of people gravitate to the sound, especially Eric Dolphy
and Booker Little together. Eric Dolphy is definitely one
of those guys who is an acquired taste, I have to say. And
the combination of stuff that he was doing was so specific.
It was very Bird-like, the little nuances, the way he would
attack the phrases. But his sound was so avant-garde. It
was just so non-bebop. And his approach to melody and
the way he played the altissimo was unique. Even when he
played with Trane, it was almost like Dolphy was taking
him even more left.- Roy Hargrove
“Strasbourg/St. Denis” (Earfood, EmArcy). Hargrove, trumpet;
Justin Robinson, alto saxophone; Gerald Clayton, piano; Danton
Boller, bass; Montez Coleman, drums. Recorded in 2008.
BEFORE: [Immediately] When Roy passed, I was on tour
with a bunch of friends, and someone mentioned it, and we
were all blown away, because some people knew him really
well in the band, and all of us greatly admired him. I re-
member coming up as a jazz player, I would hear him play,
and you’d think, “This guy can’t be this young.” He was
good, obviously, but the way he played, he was like an old
soul. You’d hear him play just a note, a ballad, and he had
such a grasp of the tradition and the idea of what American
music is in general, from the blues to jazz to R&B to hip-
hop. He embodied it all. And did it in such a natural way.
The impression that I got was he didn’t have to think about
anything. He just played. So when he passed, I started go-
ing back to a lot of those records that I used to listen to as a
young guy, and just shaking my head, like, man, this is still
blowing my mind away. JTxRead the complete Miguel Zenón Before & After listen-
ing session—including one more track, by Pat Metheny—
at JazzTimes.com.