Wayne Shorter took a huge musical and spiritual leap forward with Atlantis, his first recording as a leader after an11 year hiatus. 00:33 He talks about the collaboration and creation with the artists he recorded it with and how it transcended the norms for composition something he was criticized for in music class, 01:19 "You mix musical styles,apples and oranges. Stick to the lesson plan.". 02:25 Then he talks about how he was moved toward the concept of Atlantis itself. 05:45 He describes his musical partnership and friendship with Milton Nascimento and Elis Regina. 09:00 He then talks about Lonette McKee, Maxine Sullivan and acting and playing in the movie Round Midnight with the likes of Herbie Hancock (who won an Oscar for his composition) and Dexter Gordon (who was nominated for an Oscar for his acting performance). 12:10 Finally his hope for a brighter future he did not live to see. All images of Atlantis created with Adobe Photoshop/Firefly. Please excuse my excited utterances. I was young and in the presence of greatness.
youtube site https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtsIZ_bMcIgEpWwNil1gYd5_UghWYxHmS
Wayne Shorter took a huge musical and spiritual leap forward with Atlantis, his first recording as a leader after an11 year hiatus. 00:33 He talks about the collaboration and creation with the artists he recorded it with and how it transcended the norms for composition something he was criticized for in music class, 01:19 "You mix musical styles,apples and oranges. Stick to the lesson plan.". 02:25 Then he talks about how he was moved toward the concept of Atlantis itself. 05:45 He describes his musical partnership and friendship with Milton Nascimento and Elis Regina. 09:00 He then talks about Lonette McKee, Maxine Sullivan and acting and playing in the movie Round Midnight with the likes of Herbie Hancock (who won an Oscar for his composition) and Dexter Gordon (who was nominated for an Oscar for his acting performance). 12:10 Finally his hope for a brighter future he did not live to see. All images of Atlantis created with Adobe Photoshop/Firefly. Please excuse my excited utterances. I was young and in the presence of greatness.
youtube site https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtsIZ_bMcIgEpWwNil1gYd5_UghWYxHmS
website https://caljazzphoto.com/
We never tracked over three hours a day because everyone had different schedules. And the feeling was getting it, putting everything into it without talking about it. No one, , everyone was really relaxed. We had a lot of laughing going on in the studio. And Larry Kline who is Joni Mitchell's husband, he was right there. Working on this record. And down the street working on his wife's record at night. So he's working day and night. They came in and read the, especially the bass and piano parts. alex acuna had a whole score to look at too but there were no drum parts written. He just looked at the score as he played and they did it so organically, when I was in music class, like orchestration, modern harmony . We had to write little, you know, short pieces to demonstrate a style. The teachers, the professors used to say you, you mix styles together. You mix apples and oranges and everything. They were saying to stick to the point for the lesson plan or the teaching point. But I found that whatever the style may be, if it's a mixed thing, there's another way of getting A feeling of of expressing something that grows. I think a song can is like a vehicle. You can get in it and ride, go for a ride. You know, on Atlantis. And like on the eve of departure. I guess someone who really knows music history, they can, they can pick out different styles that, that's going on in there. But, to me I was thinking this song is like a vehicle, a rocket ship taking off, taking the women and children and this song , to depict an escaping from Atlantis on the eve of departure without using any dissonances. You think of science fiction or fantasy in a movie with a soundtrack, you're gonna have a lot of, you know, strange sounds and everything like that. And the title of the album came to me during the third week. Like this feeling of Atlantis. I was doodling on the back of the album. You see on the back of the album, on the top, there's like a, like a little crest or something. That, that just came out of my hand. It was just going. And I looked down and I said, This looks like some Conan stuff, you know? But then inside me, in my life, something said, Atlantis, Atlantis. Not like that word, but it was the, the meaning of Atlantis was, something was, something was trying to get in touch with me, too, I think.. Trying to get its spoken word, have it manifest through the album. The feeling was so positive. And now I, read in the paper , Russians claim they found Atlantis have you seen that? Some were found sitting babbling and talking to dead people and relatives one guy was talking to his mother, who had died a long time ago. And they, they're now receiving psychiatric treat treatment they went off, they're saying that it was not a violent, it seems euphoric. There was a lot of spiritual during the recording of this album. My good friends, you know, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna contact every one of them as the days and weeks go by and really thank them for doing what they did. Yeah, because they could hear the writing and the part writing, especially the way you wrote those bass parts. That was gorgeous. It was really nice. I really loved it. Oh yeah. That, that was really, really something there. And another interviewer asked me how did I approach doing this album after not doing an album for 11 years. And I said One thing I didn't wanna do was to come out with a, you know, go at it like I'm gonna come up with a shocker, you know, a slam bang home run or something like that. After 11 years, Wayne Shorter comes out with a big plan, you know. Yeah, you know, like you're drowning in a heavy beat or whatever, you know. Or do something really out avant garde, you know. A lot of fast notes and this and that. Like I did that, and you say, guess what I've been doing for 11 years. You know, nothing. It sounds like, it would sound like just practicing and very, to me, academic or clinical. One of the simpler songs, I guess, When You Dream it's beautiful. The way the vocal parts go in, like the harmonies rhythms, where they sort of stop and go,. Oh yeah, We wrote it together. A young lady from Hawaii, a very beautiful lady, inside and out. Her name is Edgy Lee, L E E. And she lives in, well, she lives here, but she co wrote that with me, and her boyfriend co wrote the first one and, and Endangered Species. Joey, we call him Joey Vitarelli. Together they run, in Los Angeles, the producers workshop. Producers one and two, now they're building producers three, number three in there for video and everything. And the top Sinclaver they just got in that studio.. They said Stevie Wonder has one. Joey Vitarelli has the third one in the world. In the world. So Joey and Edgy. And they're good people. They've been with me all the way on this record. The tune reminds me a lot of your some of your Brazilian compositions, especially the ones off of Native Dancers and your work with Milton Nascimento. Yeah Milton was in L. A. last week before, last week, when we played at the Palace Theater, I mean the Palace Court. Nightclub. And he was there, and when Joni Mitchell came joining her husband, and, we may go to Rio during Carnival time and do a concert you know, and he's in a different, I saw him, he's in a different space now, a different place, and so am I. I don't say musically, but just in general, in, in the, all the aspects of our lives have, have shifted, or, you know, there are other things manifesting now, so he came and he's looking really healthy and good he's running on the beach. Both of us are running, we didn't know. And keeping our weight together and all that. So we, we will get together. He was with me when I was a guest in Elisa Regina's house too. We had planned to do an album, Elisa and I. But she was taken from us. And I, I loved that woman, you know. And she was a guest in my house for quite a while, too. And I have pictures of her around the house. Milton was with us. He was supporting he was involved with this movie with Klaus Kinski. The movie about this man that's Natasha Kinski's father. Dragging his boat through the Amazon. No shit, it's Fitzcarraldo. Yeah. Wow. You remember the beginning? Yeah. Remember they opened the door of a theater or something like that? Huh. And there was an usher with his back to you? That was Milton Nascimento. He was an usher in a theater. Jesus. So he told me, I'm doing a movie with Claudia Cardinale, ha ha ha ha, in the jungle. So he, Milton, simple needs excite him, so he's not after glorification and everything. So this will all come out in the music, our next album together. And of course, Elise, to me, she was the finest female singer and, and at that, that time for me down there. Jack Douglas was going to produce the album. You know, he did John Lennon's last album and It was really, you know, something, you know. So anyway, at that time our managers were Prince's managers, Cavallo, Ruffalo, and Fagnoli. And I'll be also collaborating with a very fine singer and actress. I can see she's a very fine actress, it's, you know, it's not difficult to see, you know she played in Cotton Club. Oh, Loretta McKee. Loretta McKee. Woo, Jesus, man, she is, she knocked me out. We're gonna get together and do something. Oh, she did that tune, The Old Wind? Yeah. Oh, man, I, cause I, I have heard all, it's one of my favorite tunes, I've heard Art Tatum do it, I've heard all the old Maxine Sullivan do it. Yeah. And she, and she, she just did it for the movie, man, and it's a classic version, it knocked me. Yeah, she is something. She's in the, in the, by the way, I took a little small plane ride with Maxine Sullivan about 1967. We were both late going to the New, Newport Festival, flying in from Europe, both of us late. But anyway I always liked Maxine Sullivan. That, yeah, that, that straight arrow kind of voice, but like, little tenderness in there. But the, but the don't get too close to me. Don't, don't hold me too tight, you know, voice. Ha ha ha. So Lynette is in this movie that we were doing we were filming in in Paris. Yeah, they have Dexter Gordon playing a part of a musician, but superimposed into his personal character, the characterization is, where you'd see Bud Powell Lester Young, Charlie Parker, it's like that. And and we're all acting in the movie, too. We're playing, and Lynette, we did a scene with her, you know, near the end of the of the sequential shooting in Paris. Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, myself, and a French actor. He's playing Francis, the man who took care of Wood Powell. In a, in a, in a real sense, I say, took care of, brought him back to America, put him in the hospital, made sure, you know, medical and insurance and all that. Francis he did the book To Bury with Love, that big book. I have one. Herbie brought one for me back. Because he arrived in Paris first, early, you know. And Tony Williams brought about seven of them, too. Or, you know, so there's a book coming out on Bud Powell that Francis is working on. So anyway Lynette, yeah, Lynette, we did a scene together. Sort of a closing scene. I don't know if they're gonna, when they edit the movie, it will be the final closing scene of the movie. But we did something, and then she sang in an outdoor amphitheater at the, at an amphitheater built by the Romans. We did a scene there. It was a concert, a real concert. That's in the movie. And 3, 500 people from the city of Lyon. Lyon is the town where Bertrand Tavernier, the director, was born. And Lynette sang a song that's related to the movie, but it's a song where she doesn't hold long notes. You know, the long note kind of that Tommy Weather kind of thing. It's kind of medium bouncing. Stevie Wonder did the words. And it's incorporated into the start of the movie, the storyline of the movie. And the city of Lyon donated the youngest players from their symphony orchestra to do the scene. And here they were playing some straight out, straight ahead jazz, you know. But they know, they're there. Classical musicians in Europe play jazz. They're ready. And the way she did it, and Herbie arranged the song, was nice. And, and the bristles on, hair on your people's arms, in their back, and Tony Williams playing drums, he was playing, he was playing, like, keeping the beat, and he was like, yellin it! And she, you know She brought a feeling. Everyone was playing really good. Everyone joined together. And this feeling that she helped generate. The Parisian audience, they all, I thought they were going to come up on the stage for me. Yeah, yeah, I was playing hooky a lot. And there's a movie theater around the corner from the high school. The Adams Theater. They changed the name to Minsky's Burlesque House. It used to be Minsky's before, I think. I used to be in that theater watching the bands. I saw Jimmy Lunceford's band there. Stan Kenton. Woody Herman. When Stan Getz was about, I don't know, 18 or something, playing in the band, 19. The Truant officer was looking for me and so they caught me. I had, I had a number of 56 days absent for a whole year. And I knew, I met a girl, she said, I beat you, I have 58. So that's when they called me down to the principal's office, the vice principal. And They decided, they asked me, by the way, where were you all those 56 days in the theater, watching the music and all that? And that was an art major, fine arts major. So they said, well, how about, why don't you minor in music then? Maybe that'll keep you in school. So they put me in Achilles D'Amico's class. He just died last year, I heard. Achilles D'Amico. I'm gonna write a song for him. That, with that name, Achilles D'Amico, yeah, it's really nice. So, that's what got me, you know, in my last, my junior year, what was my last year? Somewhere in the middle of my junior year, they put me right in there, and I zipped along, I took final exams and all that, I took a music theory test, it was the first time in a music class, you know, learning the basics of music, and I got up. Finished my test. We had dictation, the whole thing, and a lot of, you know, A, you know, multiple choice, and this and that. And I got up, and turned my paper in, and everyone else with their head was down, and all that. She did, she did physically the dictation part first. Then there was other things, you know. With some music history in there, too. And she called the class attention to She said, you know, lift up your head. And she said, I want to show you a perfect final exam paper. And I said, ding dong. What does that mean? And I said to myself, well, it seems like I did something. I won a, I won a first prize in an art test too when I was 12 years old. It was in all city, all all the grammar schools. And I'm still looking for that painting. It's somewhere. It was in the Pittsburgh Museum. That's the last time. You know, the work, Miles would call me down and say, What you doing? I said, I'm watching Days of Our Lives or something. He said, You want to watch it with me? I'd go down and sit in his room a while. We're watching General Hospital, one of those things, you know. Another World, you know. And people don't know that, you know. Dizzy Gillespie watches soap operas and everything, you know. You gotta be careful when you put something down. There's a, there's things going on in the soap operas. You know, okay, someone go, you know, you have these extreme turnarounds in relationships and all that stuff like that. But we're all here on this planet and people are writing about life. They're doing this, people can even get paid to do it. But a lot of people, writers, like to write. They're not writing, they're human beings and they're depicting something. They're depicting life. Getting back to Miles for a second though, it's sort of funny just to repeat that. It's like, some of the people I've talked to recently, I've talked to like, my old saxophonist is Bill Evanson. Yeah. And Daryl. And then this guy Dave Holland, played bass with him. And everybody I talked to about who's met him. He's a nice guy. He's a very supportive guy. And it's funny, we got this image, a lot of people got this image of Miles Davis. Oh yeah, I'd like to say, well, my friend, my good friend Herbie Hancock, and when his sister, Jean, was taken from us, she passed on, I loved that woman too, you know. Miles called my house. And he had just come back from Japan, and Herbie was still, he was going on his way back to Greece. He's still working on the movie, you know, overall music for the movie. And he wanted to catch Herbie, so he called me, and he just said you know, Anything you want, anything he can do, just call him. You know, that straight, it was in a straight, same voice, but right straight from life to life. So Miles is a good man. Yeah. Good man. Speaking, getting back to Herbie a little. There is the first, the first album I guess I heard you on was way back in Adam's Apple. Then I, then I went back to Garrett Blake and stuff after I discovered that. But that was a beautiful, beautiful record. Adam's Apple, nice. The first time I heard Footprints was on that. Oh. Which, which really took me. Footprints reminded me, I don't know what it reminded me of, it reminded me sort of like. I don't know, jungle? I don't know. Something like that. Yeah, jungle, something like that. I was thinking about Robinson Crusoe. Really? When I wrote that, and he saw that footprint in his, you know. Just that was the initial, and then I said, well. Some of the songs I've, I've, I've worked on are not finished. Like, I'm, I'm thinking of one I want to work on, I want to complete it. A song called Orbit, and some other things Mascalero. That, that, that needs a that, that song is going to become, is going to become an introduction to something else. So, certain things, you know, I don't care about the, you should not go back in the past and all that stuff. You know it's like a child. A piece of music can be like a child. And with a new way of thinking about music, you, you can Well, some of the guys, some of the composers in the classical days classical form, they did the same thing. They As long as they were living, they would change something. And you, you may find two or three different versions of, of, of something. Not everything they've done, but a certain piece of music that Debussy. tore up Claire de Lune, threw it in a waste paper basket. His wife retrieved it. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. If you have some of the experiences you bring to your, whatever you've seen before, you might think of something else you can do with it. It's funny, I have old tapes, I've put on tapes that they never knew I did because I didn't write some stuff down at first. I had dyslexia, so it was all messed up with my, the sight thing. Michael Angelo, he was doing the same thing with the Sistine Chapel. He kept on going, ha, ha, ha, ha, you know. From a first impetus to, you know, and you heard about them cleaning the Sistine Chateau, you know, and now they're starting to say that he was thought of as a great sculptor. And painting was his maybe kind of second something. So now that they're cleaning the The painting's off. They're finding that he was a master of, of avant garde color, colors. And now they're thinking he's, he is a, well, equally a great, you know, great painter and all that. I was looking at the colors. You see those on television? Well, I, no, I just heard him talk about how, how, how bizarre. Back to, just for a second to the Brazilian stuff and way of playing, sometimes when I hear, like, Milton's compositions, you know how, like, we have things you expect, we have, like, standard American compositions, you expect something in 4 4, you expect, real predictable lines. Well, Milton, you listen to some of his songs, and they'll, like, they'll be going along someplace. Will just go over here. Mm-Hmm. make perfect sense. But nothing you could have possibly expected or possibly heard from any rules, just this, some organic thing happening. Mm-Hmm.. It's another thing I seem to hear in your music, which is the thing I like about it so much, is that, that that line will have a, this sort of life that will it that's beyond like scales yeah. It I guess it's something, you've heard it in other people's, you know I guess that's what opera does, like Puccini, they're going, but you see, you hear song form still, structured song form, but some of these when people ask me what kind of music do I listen to, I listen to if it's available, you know, if I, you know, have time soundtrack stuff. That has that kind of logic illogic, you know. Something will start, and you got a hold of it, and then it goes, it eases off into another place, or it may shoot off, really, all of a sudden, because of the visual, something that's going on in there, you know. But it's not, it's not that so you know, like you have something, a visual segue into something else. Life is just like that too, you know. When you're talking with someone. And all of a sudden, an emotion comes out of nowhere, and it's a segue into, in, between two people, and they say, What were we talking about in the beginning? You know? Or take an argument, say, What was, what was the argument, where did it start? If you can see, That beneath all of the complicated things and the mesh of wire netting that we sometimes get ourselves bound up in, in a real sense life is very simple, it's very simple. We're wishing for, that breakdown of, Things that people have that, are immovable, to the point of being dogmatic what they think life should be like and everything. It's happening, the breakdown, or I call it a mass enlightenment, process of enlightenment. It's beginning to happen in this it started to happen in this century. I think we're going to see a real big thing happening in the 21st century. And, what a New Year's Eve party that's going to be. Ha ha ha ha ha. It's so, man, I'm ready for the change. That's what's funny, I was back in 67, man, that was my time. Everybody sort of loosened up a little, everybody shook it up a little. They're just a little bit, you know, freer to experience certain things. And that was fine with me.
