Duet for One

The bright airy, home of jazz legend Wayne Shorter in the hills above Studio City has a comfortable, lived-in feeling.

It is a home in which the fashionable furniture, the relaxed, unstuffy environment, the thicket of framed pictures placed on top of a baby grand piano and the profusion of artwork all attest to a warm, family environment.

Seated on a sectional couch in his study, Shorter gestures around the room, noting its openness, a light-filled wall of French doors and the smooth integration of an electronics-filled workstation and screening room.

“My wife designed it,� Shorter says. “Everything in here was her idea.�

But Shorter no longer shares the home with his wife. On July 17, while he was in Nice, France, waiting for her to join him for a vacation in Europe, Ana Maria Shorter and their niece Dalila Lucien were killed in the explosion of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island, N.Y. And the numerous photos and paintings are constant reminders of that tragedy--as well as another, in 1986, when their 14-year-old daughter Iska Maria died after a grand mal seizure.

Shorter, 63, a medium-sized, stolid-looking man, elegantly dressed in a patterned silk shirt and conservative dark trousers, remains one of the most important jazz artists in the world today. For four decades--from a stint as musical director for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers to a run with Miles Davis’ classic quintet of the ‘60s, from the co-founding (with Joe Zawinul) of Weather Report to the leadership of his own numerous groups--the saxophonist has been a vital, creative leader in the jazz community.

Much of his long career was accomplished with Ana Maria--his wife for 26 years--at his side, and a sense of her continuing proximity, in photo after photo, is everywhere throughout their home.

“My wife still comes to me,� he says. “That’s the mystery. And it’s like she keeps helping me to open new doors. It’s as though she’s prepared the way for me.�

In a brief stroll through his living room, he displays other images--paintings and sketches, done by him, of Ana Maria.

The quality of the work is first-rate, but beyond the technique, each is an act of affection and intimacy, perfectly reflecting different aspects of his wife’s essence.

Shorter points to a precisely articulated drawing in which Ana Maria wears a knit shawl.

“This one I did in one night, when I was on the road, staying in a hotel. And this one,� he says, pointing to a larger, more detailed work, “just after we moved here.�

Shorter, in his first lengthy interview since his wife’s death, seems somewhat detached as he looks at the paintings. But the many photographs and artworks, the profuse indications of his wife’s interior decorating touch, even the framed letters of sympathy that rest on a chair near his piano, all underscore his desire to keep Ana Maria’s memory alive. His continuing connection with her clearly transcends her material presence.

It’s not hard to understand why. Ana Maria Shorter was her husband’s biggest fan.

“Ana Maria had been listening to jazz practically since she was born,� says longtime friend and musical associate Herbie Hancock, “and she was already into his music when she met Wayne. And she was so much in love with his music--more than anybody--that she literally knew it from top to bottom, knew just what it was all about. It fit her perfectly, and she loved the man that the music came from, because Wayne’s music perfectly reflects him.�

Ana Maria’s flight aboard TWA 800 was the first leg in a trip to join her husband for a European vacation with their niece, the daughter of singer Jon Lucien and concert producer Maria Lucien, Ana Maria’s sister. When Shorter was informed of the accident, he immediately returned to Los Angeles. But he knew that he was faced--two weeks later--with making a previously planned Japanese tour with his group. Shorter went ahead with the tour.

“When my wife passed away,� he says, “I was thinking, ‘Oh, man, it’s going to be hard to get back to the horn, to get back to the piano to compose, to go on tour. But I had to go on this Japan tour, right away, and I started writing something, to get back into that process of discovery.�

Shorter uses the word “discovery� frequently when he discusses the feelings he has experienced since his wife’s death.

“It was that discovery thing all the time,� he says, “that mystery of discovery. I’d be stumbling through something and it was like I could sense the voice of my wife, saying ‘Don’t repeat, do something different.’ Like a gate to eternity. It’s almost as though she was saying, ‘Do your work; that is the way we find each other, eternally.’ And the fuel for that happiness to be eternal is in the work that you do, in the work that transcends earthly money and earthly finance.�

Shorter gets up, moves to the piano and plays some complex but beautifully textured chordal structures. They are, he explains, part of an arrangement for a piece to be included on an album scheduled for next year--and a reflection of the creative energies that he believes have been generated by his sense of his wife’s presence.

After a particularly rich phrase, he pauses for a moment, looks thoughtfully at his carefully notated manuscript and reflects upon the fashion in which both his musicians and his audiences tapped into a similar energy during the course of the Japanese tour.

“The players on that tour, were in Europe with me when it happened,� he recalls. “They weren’t really talking much about it, but when we got to Japan, they played as though they were on a mission.�

“And the audiences, well, the places were packed, all of them. And there was a lot of emotion going on at the end of each set and in between the songs. Someone from the States who’s lived there for the last 10 years said he’d gone to every jazz appearance of groups that came to Japan from the United States. And he said he’d never experienced this kind of emotional reaction.�

Shorter often speaks in free-floating, stream-of-consciousness paragraphs--his phrasing not unlike the loose, probing quality of his jazz improvisations--veering off into related subjects, doubling back to the original thought. His phrases are frequently interrupted with “What do you call it. . . ?� or “What’s that name. . . ?� as he searches for precisely the right word to make his point.

His thoughts bristle with an array of names, places and ideas that reflect his omnivorous appetite for information. Among the subjects that came up in a three-hour conversation: Henry James, George Carlin, Kim Basinger, Bela Bartok, Gustav Mahler, bluegrass, Igor Stravinsky, Orson Welles, Miles Davis, Jerry Garcia and Clint Eastwood as well as references to movie after movie, from “The Lady From Shanghai� to “The English Patient.�

Interestingly, his favorite movie, one he views frequently on the giant screen that dominates one wall of his study, is the classic 1948 ballet film “The Red Shoes,� a story in which the heroine dies tragically.

Asked about the potentially ironic connection, Shorter avoids the question, simply replying: “I’ve loved the movie since I first saw it when I was 16. I’ve seen it I don’t know how many times.

“And also,� he says with a slight smile, “it’s because of the feeling of discovery, of finding yourself, that’s in the movie.� Back in his study, leaning forward on his large, comfortable couch to stress a point, he inevitably returns to music, often to jazz specifically. His desire to respond to his wife’s voice, telling him, “Don’t repeat, do something different,� was an echo of his own consistent, career-long quest for new ideas.

And he believes that Ana Maria’s presence in the music in his new album is as strong as it was before she died. The album, “1 + 1� on Verve (see review, Page 85), an innovative duo outing for the saxophonist with Hancock scheduled for release this week, is Shorter’s first recording since his wife’s death.

“Ana Maria is all over the record, from beginning to end,� says Hancock, who himself lost a family member, his sister Jean, in the 1985 crash of a Delta Airlines L-1011 at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. “And not just in Wayne’s playing but in my playing, in the sound of the whole thing. But not in any kind of reference to the plane crash. It felt more like Ana Maria was on the record, inside both of us somehow. And, in that sense, it captured her spirit, or maybe not captured, but had her spirit as a part of the music.�

The project was triggered in December, when Shorter and Hancock performed together as part of the Thelonious Monk Institute’s “Celebrating America’s Music� concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

“Bill Cosby grabbed me afterwards,� Shorter recalls, “and he said, ‘That was beautiful.’ That’s when Herbie and I knew it was time to do an album.� (Left unspoken is yet another irony, that Cosby too would be dealing with his own tragic family loss in the next few weeks.)

Neither Shorter nor Hancock was content with the idea of simply doing a bunch of tunes. In many respects, the album has the quality of classical lieder, with Shorter’s soprano sax singing soprano lines over Hancock’s interactive piano. Done in a week, it has the heat of sudden inspiration and musical connection.

It also reflects a deeply held Shorter belief in the importance of not being trapped in the coils of what is easy and familiar.

“Miles Davis,� he says, “once asked me, ‘Do you ever play as if you don’t know how to play?’ He told me how John Coltrane used to do that, stumbling purposely, destroying all his expectations, his fingerprints. Sometimes he would imitate [hard-bop tenor saxophonist] Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis to get away from the things that he knew best--the safe zone. I remember Miles told me how Trane was stumbling and stumbling, and then he said [imitating Davis’ throaty voice], ‘But when he finished stumbling, man, look out! The door opened on a whole new hallway!’ �

*

Shorter’s quest for discovery began in Newark, N.J., when as a teenager he was a regular “hooky player.� Brought in for a meeting with the principal of his junior high school, Shorter, who showed an interest in art, was asked where he went during his frequent disappearances from class.

“I told them I went to the Adams Theatre because they had a stage show and a movie,� he recalls. “Things like ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ with Duke Ellington or Jimmie Lunceford or something. And the principal said, ‘Oh, so you like music,’ and put me in the hands of the head of instrumental music.�

Fifty years later, Shorter still remembers the names of the music teachers from those days. And he is proud, even now, of the initial discovery that was revealed at that time--that he was unusually gifted for music.

“The first time I took a test in music theory,� he says, “I remember finishing it and handing it in while everybody else had their heads down, still working. I got real nervous while the teacher looked at it and started edging toward the door. But she said, ‘Wait a minute,’ looked at it and then held it up to the class and said, ‘Class, this is an example of a perfect paper.’ �

Shorter leans back and smiles, remembering the early years, and another experience that had a long-term effect.

“I’ll never forget it,� he says. “The instrumental music teacher came into class one day and said, ‘Where do you think music is going?’ And he held up three records: Yma Sumac’s ‘Voice of the Xtabay,’ Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ and a Charlie Parker record. I thought they were all pretty interesting choices.�

Initially playing clarinet, Shorter added tenor saxophone as a teenager, playing in local bands, often with his brother.

“A buck-fifty a piece to play for YMCA dances,� he says. “That’s what it was like in those days. But we were real unique. Once we participated in a battle of the bands against a slick band with uniforms and music stands. Well, my brother had attitude. He wore galoshes and gloves and carried his saxophone in a shopping bag. And he said, ‘That’s bebop.’ He put a chair in front of him instead of a music stand, with a piece of newspaper for music, because we played by rote--’Emanon,’ ‘One Bass Hit,’ bop tunes like that, or as much of them as we could.

“Funny thing was that we were tied with the other band at first. Then we each played one more tune, and we did ‘Manteca.’ And that was it; we won the prize. The next day the bandleader of the other band called me and asked me to join them.�

Shorter went on to pick up a bachelor’s degree in music education from New York University and serve in the Army for couple of years before joining Blakey in 1959. Since that time Shorter’s career has been on a consistently upward spiral, through the Davis years, the co-stewardship of Weather Report, a wide variety of partnerships and his own groups.

The winner of four Grammys, including a contemporary jazz award this year for “High Life,� Shorter also has created a number of frequently performed jazz compositions. Among them: “Speak No Evil,� “Nefertiti,� “Pinocchio,� “ESP� and “Footprints.�

Just last week, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Shorter, along with bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist James Moody, will receive a 1998 American Jazz Master Fellowship. The award, which will be presented in January at the International Assn. of Jazz Educators’ annual conference, provides a $20,000 grant to each recipient.

His upcoming schedule includes considerably more travel, including a tour with Hancock from July until the end of November, followed by a tour of Asia with Hancock in February 1998. In between, in December and January, Shorter will complete his next album.

“Then,� he continues with a chuckle, “after February I’ll go philharmonic.�

The reference is to a recording Shorter calls a “classical album�--a novel enterprise for him. Inevitably, discussion of new work, of new “discovery,� generates thoughts of his late wife:

“I’m doing this because I have this kind of artistic license, due to her, and she will be right in there. The classical record will actually be something that transcends any kind of music, even the word ‘classical.’ I’m not going to do a jazz version of an aria or something like that.�

Shorter plans instead to include both a mix of familiar pieces and originals.

“I want the new material to celebrate something else that was once original,� he explains. “I love the way Trane once used that melody [he hums a phrase] to celebrate one of those Russian composers--Borodin, I think. That’s the path I’d like to go on.�

Shorter pauses, reflective for a long moment, hesitating, as he frequently does, to formulate a thought in his mind before he expresses it.

“I think this is the right path for me, now,� he finally says. “And I think it’s because of my wife’s presence. I feel her around me, all the time.

“You know, people have different reactions to tragedy. Some people are tempted to drive over a cliff when something with such seeming finality happens to them. Art Blakey once told me that he got news when he was playing onstage--a telegram that his mother had died. And he said that all he could think to do was to try to ‘beat the hell out of the drums, for her.’ �

Shorter pauses again and glances toward the pictures on the piano before continuing:

“The last thing my wife would have wanted was for me to sit around feeling sorry for myself. She wasn’t like that. Maria Lucien is going to New York in July,� he says, referring to his sister-in-law. “They’re going to have a whole ceremony, all kinds of things, with the survivors.

“But I’ll be on my way to London. And I couldn’t go anyhow. I can hear my wife saying, ‘You don’t need ceremonies. Get to work, do this, do that. That’s the fastest way you’re going to see me.�