Laboratory: A Conversation with Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci on the Legacy of Wayne Shorter

There is a tendency to mythologize someone like Wayne Shorter, who seems larger than life. Or to put the subject on a pedestal with the label  “great” without providing a sufficient and accurate discussion of why they truly are so. It becomes all too easy for people with little understanding of the facts to jump onto the bandwagon. On the other side are people who essentially list accomplishments as evidence of worth. True appreciation of a person requires more than broad statements or an overview of one’s CV. A fuller picture of Wayne Shorter is obtainable only through the words of those who knew him well. And that is what makes a conversation with Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci about their friend so special.

Both Pérez and Patitucci are well-established artists who have led incredible careers in their own right. But those paths are inextricably tied to their roles – alongside Brian Blade – in Shorter’s quartet. The music of the saxophonist’s only permanent acoustic band was not dropped off by some “Visitor from Nowhere.” The blurring of lines between precomposition and improvisation shaped much of Shorter’s writings for Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and his own Blue Note classics. The cross-cultural obliteration of forced categories formed the core of Weather Report and Native Dancer (Columbia, 1975). The quartet rocketed music to new heights by taking guidance from both paths, combining them through artistic fearlessness. When jazz – as the bandleader contended –  “means I dare you,” the group was eternally willing to tackle a bolder challenge than the one that came before. Like the heroes in the science fiction films he held dear, Shorter always sought and explored new hitherto undiscovered territories and brought his younger crew with him as he did. This is particularly evident in Celebration, Volume 1 (Blue Note, 2024). 

Towards the end of his life, Shorter was tasked with going through many unreleased live recordings to see which he felt should be made public. The one that truly blew him away was a date captured at the 2014 Stockholm Jazz Festival. The performance heard in this first in a series of planned Celebration releases, well captures the brilliance of the undefined space between “jazz” and “Western classical” and that between creating in the moment and in advance, which was so capably inhabited by Shorter’s last group. The entirety of the album flows as if to reflect a single journey. Songs, in their traditional sense, are mere guideposts along the way. Some of these landmarks are built around ideas the saxophonist has held for many years. For one, Shorter wrote “Orbits” over a half-century earlier. However, the familiarity of these moments is used primarily to provide momentary comfort to the listener as the group propels forward. Half the album consists of moments of “Zero Gravity” through different numbered dimensions, where the group doesn’t rely upon the gravity of the familiar to slow them down. It is easy to see why Shorter was so enthusiastic about Celebration, Volume 1; it’s one of the quartet’s finest journeys in an incredible two-decade trek. 

This conversation with Pérez and Patitucci was captured on August 3, 2024, at the Newport Jazz Festival. It occurred immediately following their performance in a group called “The Legacy of Wayne Shorter.” Although functionally a quartet- with the other two seats filled that day by Terri Lyne Carrington and Ravi Coltrane – it often seemed like a fifth musician was on stage. This author had the good fortune to see Shorter perform a handful of times, all but one at Newport. The configurations were often different – a group with Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, and Brian Blade; the quartet both by itself and augmented by Hancock; a duo between Shorter and Hancock. But, regardless of the particular setting, each time, Shorter’s music had a certain ineffably magical quality that incomprehensibly made you feel more connected to the Earth even as it transported you to faraway galaxies. The Legacy group captured this same essence, providing a beautiful reminder that though the maestro has passed, he is still, in many ways, very much with us.

PostGenre: The performance you both just gave with Ravi Coltrane and Terri Lyne Carrington was incredible. 

Danilo Pérez: Yeah, we were wondering how it was gonna come together. It was such a special thing for our first time together.

PG: This was the first time the four of you played together?

John Patitucci: We played together a little with an orchestra, but not like this. 

DP: No, not like this.

JP: This is the first full gig we played.

PG: But you have had some other performances celebrating Wayne, just with different saxophonists joining you. You did one with Chris Potter, for instance. 

DP: Yes, we played a tribute to Wayne with Chris at [the] New Orleans [Jazz and Heritage Festival].

JP: Yeah, but that was with Brian [Blade on drums]. 

DP: We’re trying different configurations. Now we’re going to work with Mark Turner, too. And then next year, we’re going out with Ravi joining us.

PG: Since you mentioned Brian, for these tributes, why experiment with different drummers, instead of just your Children of the Light trio with Brian and an alternating saxophonist?

JP: We have the trio with Brian, of course, and he’s gonna do a lot of these too. But Terri is…

DP: She’s part of our family.

JP: Yeah, part of our family. When I started playing with Wayne in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – before the quartet came together – Terri played drums with us. She knew Wayne for a long time. It seemed like for our tribute to Wayne, we should not focus solely on the quartet. We wanted to present our family more broadly.

PG: OK. Besides obviously honoring Wayne, what interested you in having these performances dedicated to him?

DP: What we are doing is that we are in a celebration mode for Wayne.

JP: Yeah.

DP: There are a bunch of projects that Wayne had in mind before he passed that will be coming out soon, and we’re gonna help support them. There is a new record coming out soon. I don’t know if you have heard it.

PG: It is fantastic.

DP: Oh my God. What a journey. We’re trying to promote that sound. And then our trio will also keep going with more projects too. These performances are not tied to just one project but tie into several we have planned.

PG: Since you mentioned Celebration, Volume 1, Wayne listened through several live recordings of the quartet to determine what should be released. Do you know why he chose that specific performance?

DP: He wanted to showcase how spontaneous the quartet could be. The whole record is probably one of the most spontaneous recordings of us.

JP: It caught a jump in the development of what we were trying to get to.

DP: People are going to struggle to determine which parts of the record are planned and which are not. The performance was mostly not planned. There are a lot of moments where it sounds like we are playing a composition, but it was created in the moment.

PG: Wayne wrote most of the compositions you played for that performance. But one, “Edge of the World (End Title),” came from Arthur B. Rubenstein’s soundtrack to WarGames (United Artists, 1983). In general, Wayne was a huge fan of movies. Do you have any sense as to why he never got into film scoring?

DP: Yeah, I think he wanted to, it just never worked out. I think he would have been very excited to do a film score. 

JP: You know, often in Hollywood, how they do film scores is artificial. Some Italian directors like [Sergio] Leone would let the composer write the music first, and then they would shoot the movie around the music. That wasn’t happening in LA. So they probably approached Wayne on occasion, but they knew he was gonna wanna take time to do it right.

DP: He did have a friend who was trying to get him to write music for a film, but it didn’t go through. But if someone had approached Wayne with the opportunity to score a science fiction film…

JP: Oh, he would have done it right then and there, but they would have had to allow him to be who he was.

DP: Yeah.

JP: The thing is, Wayne was not just some stock guy in Hollywood who would send in a bunch of cues, and that’s it. He would have challenged those putting together the film. [laughing]. And they might not have been ready for that.

It’s like Stravinsky. A director brought Stravinsky in to do a film score. They told him they wanted him to do the movie, and he was on board. But then they asked him how long it would take to create the score, and he said a year. Obviously, that didn’t work. When someone’s a genius like that, don’t ask them to write a thirty-second jingle. It’s not gonna happen.

PG: Wayne was always stretching and freer in how he approached things but kept his music from turning fully avant-garde.  Was that aspect something that he consciously had in mind? Of expanding while remaining melodic?

DP: Oh yeah, we call that concept comprovisation. He inspired both of us and Brian, to be in the moment and try to bridge those spaces where you are improvising and composing so that there’s no space between the two.

JP: Wayne wasn’t a big fan of just freak-out free. He wanted to hear people compose in the moment and challenge themselves to start from nothing. But everybody in the band was a composer, and he wanted us all to compose together. 

PG: So, what do you feel like you learned the most from working with him over so many years?

DP: The layer of learning from him is at many different levels. As a person. As a family man. As a human being. It’s not just music. Music is part of the component. From Wayne, I learned the importance of human development through music; how important it is to never separate your music from being a human being, and how to cope between those two elements. I think he taught us a lot. To improvise without judgment. To not judge each other. To be patient. To not create sides. For me, to understand the power of marriage. How important it was in my life to get married. Like today, my daughter was watching our performance, and she was crying. She felt Wayne’s presence today.

JP: Wow.

DP: And I feel like it’s all related. We are there playing for him. She’s there feeling the energy. And if I hadn’t listened to Wayne, I would have missed out. She probably wouldn’t be here listening to this music. In life, everything is related. There’s nothing wasted here. In terms of music, he taught expansion.

JP: Yeah, I mean, when Danilo and Brian joined us, it was an interesting thing because I was with Wayne for years before they came. I saw Wayne open up when Danilo and Brian came into the band in so many different ways.

I first heard Wayne when I was a kid, on Mosaic (Blue Note, 1962), when he was with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. I was probably around eight [years old]. My grandfather brought me these records, and Wayne’s music deeply touched me emotionally. I didn’t really understand the music. I didn’t understand jazz yet. I couldn’t figure out what the musicians were doing. But it deeply shook me. And later, of course, I found out more about Wayne and also discovered the work he did with Miles [Davis] and the rest.

Wayne’s music was always deep, but the melodies were haunting. They stay with you forever. Harmonically, he could do whatever he wanted. Rhythmically, there was always some beautiful thing there inside the music. But he never lost the idea of how to communicate with people on a deep level, even with deep music. We were shocked when we started playing, and people of all ages were somehow responding to the music. Some of the music was not easy.

I learned patience from Wayne, to take your time. And also courage. I think I needed more courage before I started working with him. I was afraid to just hang a note in the air and let my sound and what I was feeling inside be enough. I was sometimes hiding behind my technique. And I heard him play, I was like, “Oh my God, it’s just so emotional.”

Then there was the family side. The way he was with my kids and my wife, how he was with our group and with all our families. We became so tight. And when [Danilo and Brian] came, he opened up onto a whole other level I’d never seen before. He felt good. It was almost like Wayne was waiting for everybody to be in their chairs. And then he would start going through his music. He would read through his music. It was incredible. He wanted us to start from nothing and create. He wanted us to have the courage to listen and create counterpoint, harmonic progressions, and rhythmic things from nothing. 

There was an existing chemistry. Brian, Danilo, and I had already had a trio. I was on Danilo’s records before he joined Wayne and he played on some of my stuff too. But when we came together with Wayne, something happened. And you can’t plan that. You can’t contrive that. I believe it’s a gift from God. We can’t take credit for it. We can only try to be present and to give ourselves to it. We work on our instruments so we can have freer expression. But what happened with that group? I never experienced anything like that in my life. None of the other bands I was ever in with Wayne went to that place. So now, when we play together, we carry that experience with us also. But it would have never happened had we not been together with Wayne like that. It was one of those things nobody can take credit for. That energy just happened.

PG: You could feel Wayne’s spirit in the performance today as well.

DP: Yeah, yeah, he’s with us. We feel that always.

JP: He really is.

DP: We’re committed to continuing this. We had an open canvas, and he wanted us to continue this journey. We promised to do it and are on a mission. 

JP: And it’s funny because Danilo and I had this bond that happened and we wound up playing with Roy Haynes, which was a beautiful experience with another mentor. And then, we played some with Jack DeJohnette too. We have respect for our elders and cherish them. It’s not just a gig when you are with them. So, when Danilo and Brian came into Wayne’s group, they had so much love, respect, and admiration but also actual affection for Wayne, too. I think he really felt that. And then he dropped his guard. We were pretty tight already, but we became closer when we were all four together because Wayne opened us up even more. It was incredible.

PG: The quartet was together for twenty years, which is an incredible run for any band. How do you feel the communication between the four of you changed the most during its life?

DP: I think we developed an incredible telepathic thing and could read each other’s minds.

JP: Yeah, our connections just got deeper.

DP: We got to this very beautiful space. Soul sound. Vibration. We laughed at times. We actually experienced something incredible on the stage. Wayne said he flew out of the stage one day.

JP: Wayne was very spiritual.

DP: Yes, very spiritual. And we all – with our families and kids, too –  just got more and more into each other’s lives. We had really different relationships than you would find in most bands. John and I were there for the symphony.

JP: Yeah, we wound up kind of rehearsing the conductor. He would give us a lot of stuff to do. He even gave us the chance to do an orchestration of “The Three Marias.”

DP: So, Wayne became a father figure, a mentor, and a friend to us. 

JP: He was so encouraging. He greatly believed in us, even as composers. He wanted us to write and would support us with our ideas. He was pushing us and cheering us on.

DP: It was an incredibly unique and remarkable experience that encompasses the music. And we were connected. We wouldn’t communicate with one another only when we were on tour. No, we stayed in touch throughout the year and talked to each other all the time, checked in on one another, and saw what each other was up to. The last time I visited Wayne, [Wayne’s wife] Carolina told him to tell us what he had said to her recently. He hesitated a little but ultimately said how much he missed being on the road with us. 

JP: Yeah, because Wayne experienced a certain kind of love with us. Sometimes, people were intimidated by him because he was so brilliant. But we were like family. We just loved him. We were not holding back anything with him, and he didn’t hold back with us. 

PG: As a final thought, you are calling this tribute group “The Legacy of Wayne Shorter.” What do you feel is Wayne’s legacy?

DP: Yes, we are bringing the process. What you saw on stage today came from practicing with him for so many years – twenty – and we are going to bring that to every concert. That’s the legacy we call “zero gravity.”  There are a lot of things where we don’t know what’s happening, but it’s coming out in our performance. That’s why we are talking about a legacy. That’s something that we really wanted to embrace and work with. The quartet was really a workshop for a lot of things that he wanted to do. It was a laboratory, and we want to keep this laboratory. 

Ravi just told me that he felt something very special today. He said, “I play with a lot of people, but when you guys started playing, I felt Wayne there. You brought me to that space.” That’s the love we have for Wayne. 

JP: I think it’s the love. And we were given such a great gift to be there when he would bring in all these things. What Danilo was saying is so true; working with Wayne was like having a laboratory. He would bring in new things that became orchestral pieces later on. For all the things he was working on, he would bring them in and we would read through them and be blown away. He would often continue to work on the pieces and keep developing them. He already knew he was heading toward some larger form stuff. We got to witness the development of a genius. But, remember, he also gave us so much freedom. He wanted us to be part of his process, and he gave us all the room in the world to experiment and become hopefully better versions of ourselves. He was incredibly nurturing and very generous.

DP: Yeah, absolutely. And I think he would have been proud of our performance today. When you are in a busy outdoor space like this, there is a tendency to be big and less intimate. Less willing to take chances in front of people. But I think he would have been proud that we took chances and kept the artists connected through the whole set in this form of “Zero Gravity.” I think Wayne would have been very proud.

‘Celebration, Volume 1’ will be released on Blue Note Records on August 23, 2024. The album can be purchased on the label’s website. You can learn more about Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci on their respective websites. The Legacy of Wayne Shorter will be on tour throughout the Fall of 2024 and 2025.

Photo credit: Tomo Muscionico