Wayne Shorter Travels The Spaceways
Eighty-five now and in a wheelchair for his recent Kennedy Center Honors, not to mention notoriously self-critical, Wayne Shorter releases albums so infrequently these days that a new one is automatically a BIG EVENT. Whether or not Emanon — the winner of this year's NPR Jazz Critics Poll and Shorter's first album since Without a Net in 2013, which topped that year's poll — is an event, it's surely big, literally. Its three CDs — one matching the saxophonist and his longtime rhythm section (pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade) with the 34-piece Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the other two recorded live in London, no venue or date given — are tucked into an 8 by 10-inch, 84-page hardcover comic book illustrated by Randy DuBurke and captioned by Shorter and one Monica Sly. (Blue Note refers to it as a graphic novel, but it's more vintage Marvel superhero fantasy than quotidian Harvey Pekar or Daniel Clowes). The package lists for $75 (figure at least double that for the signed vinyl edition, though Blue Note's website is vague), and is available only as physical product — no streaming or downloading, meaning that you can't hear the music without shelling out for the whole damn thing.
Based only in part on his bypassing of hard bop and fusion conventions in his solos hundreds of times) and the understandable pride he takes in his virtuosity, Shorter might have been a lifetime Sun Ra Arkestra member, Ra's fellow Afrofantasist (John Gilmore, in other words). Beginning with a cover depicting Shorter's face adrift in outer space, everything about seems intended to prove my point. Anybody can figure out that "Emanon" is "no name" spelled backwards. But I bet Shorter, a student of Asian culture, sci-fi buff and comic book collector on top of everything else, knows it's also the name of the heroine of a series of novels drawn in a style called , more or less the on-paper equivalant of anime.
