Wayne Shorter
Alegria

Wayne Shorter has been on the international jazz scene since 1958, having traversed the hard-bop era with Art Blakey, played in the '60s with the legendary Miles Davis quintet, and collaborated on the revolutionary Bitches Brew. He navigated the '70s at the helm with Zawinul of Weather Report, a leading group in the fusion scene. In the same period, he opened up to other musical cultures, especially South American; in the '80s, he successfully experimented with (sometimes excessive) technology in synthesizers, and ventured into the pursuit of pure melody, which led him to collaborate with Milton Nascimento and our own Pino Daniele (what a sad fate he met), not to mention various spontaneous collaborations over the years with Joni Mitchell, Petrucciani, Hancock, and so on.
All this because Wayne Shorter is a jazz musician. And jazz is not a genre, let alone a style, but a way of approaching music with intellectual curiosity and without prejudice, in search of its perhaps fleeting “essence.”

It might be a bit exaggerated to say that Alegria represents the sum of the experiences of an entire life, but without a doubt, we are faced with what I believe is one of the most heartfelt works of the saxophonist from Newark.
This is due to the choice of a large ensemble, which is a novelty for Shorter, as he always favored smaller formations. Note, though, we are not dealing with the classic “soloist+big band” album; the use of brass, woodwinds, and strings is always measured and never pervasive, always showing a particular attention to the overall timbral result. The quartet is the usual one from recent years, Patitucci, Blade, Perez, who are entrusted with three pieces without the aid of other musicians.
The choice of tracks draws from both the lesser-known repertoire of the composer (Sacajawea, Angola, Orbits, and Capricorn II) and the North American songbook (Serenata by Leroy Anderson and Vendiendo Alegria by a certain Joso Spralja, a Dalmatian emigrant in Canada), as well as from traditional, and “cultured” music (Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 by Villa-Lobos). The originality lies entirely in the guise that Shorter gives to these pieces both in terms of arrangement and execution. The style is unmistakable, the arrangements are permeated with that sense of mystery that has accompanied the saxophonist since the beginning of his career, but there is nothing dark and inscrutable, rather, there is a kind of magic, a revealed mystery that allows different musical forms to coexist within a single discourse (and it's not easy to explain eh...).
Shorter's soloing (which, by the way, is the only soloing throughout the work) has become even stronger, so to speak, with a lyricism delineated with a few clear brushstrokes, every note is intentional, sought after, the solo lines are imbued with a strong melodic sense, sometimes hypnotic, magical, in a word Wayne Shorter...
Lastly, it is worth noting the presence of Terri Lyne Carrington on drums in some tracks replacing the trusty Brian Blade, and the great Alex Acuna on percussion, which contributes significantly to creating that certain “ancestral” sound that permeates the entire album.

This 2003 work can undoubtedly be counted among the masterpieces of jazz in recent years. The drawback is that Shorter has long surpassed seventy, and it's doubtful whether he will be able to give a jolt to jazz that seems to be cinched on itself chasing old style that, even if played by “young lions.” It would be clichéd to close with “an album that cannot be missing in the collection of anyone who is a music enthusiast,” I simply hope that those who are, or believe to be, in search of a starting point to understand that universal cultural we humans call Music, listen to it well.