The world’s most important jazz musician

Describing an artist as important is a dangerous thing.  It can carry with it the sub-meaning of misunderstood or inaccessible.  So, fresh out of a performance by the Wayne Shorter Quartet at Dominion Chalmers United Church in Ottawa, I’m reluctant to use the word important to describe Shorter, but he truly is.  Misunderstood or inaccessible, not so much.

He’s not just most important because of who he has played with (Art Blakey from ’59 to ’64, Miles Davis from ’64 to ’70, Weather Report, which he co-founded, from ’71 to ’85) or because of his dozens of solo efforts.  And he’s not just most important because of the number of compositions he has written that have become classics.  And he’s not just most important because, as his 80th birthday approaches next month, he has been right in the thick of it through jazz’ many changing moods of the last 55 years.

These are all part of the answer, but the remarkable thing about Wayne Shorter is that he is the most important jazz musician today because of what he is doing today…because of what he just did in front of 900 people in Ottawa.  What he did was step out on stage with his longtime quartet (drummer Brian Blade, bassist John Pattitucci and pianist Danilo Perez) and present an uninterrupted hour-long musical conversation with his bandmates that was loosely based on his tune Orbits, but was really something new, created out of the air, entirely of-the-moment.  The crowd, which greeted Shorter at the beginning of the evening with an extended standing ovation, was challenged, seduced and thrilled by the journey.

So, important?  Yes.  Brilliant?  Of course.  Relevant?  Completely.  To be in an intimate space hearing Shorter’s 55 years of experience pour off the stage was one of the greatest concert experiences I’ve ever had, and such a fitting conclusion to a fantastically programmed festival.