Footprints Live!

Product Description Footprints Live! is saxophonist Wayne Shorter's first all-acoustic album since 1967, his first disc as leader since 1994's High Life and his first live recording as leader. It documents his concerts in 2001 with a powerhouse group featuring Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums. After several years of favouring the soprano saxophone in performance, Shorter focuses on Footprints Live! on the tenor saxophone, which is featured on seven of the eight tracks. The all-star programme includes some of his best-known compositions, including "Footsteps", "JuJu", "Sanctuary" and "Aung San Suu Kyi". Shorter reflects on the group's working method: "When you're a young player working with other musicians, you figure out ahead of time who's going to play things at a certain time so that no-one intrudes on someone else's solo. But we got rid of that intrusion idea here. There's so much more to discover when you're conversing and telling a story. That's why I like pushing the envelope. It's an affirmation and confirmation of eternity." Amazon.co.uk Footprints Live! constitutes a number of firsts for Wayne Shorter: this is his first live album as a leader, it is his first wholly acoustic record since the late 1960s and it is first release as a leader in this new decade, it being no less than eight years since his previous headline album, High Life. Such precedents establish expectations and bring their own pressures, but Shorter has responded well. Firstly, the recording stems from his recent international tour with a quartet made up of himself (on tenor here for all but one track), pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, a tour that was reckoned to be his strongest as a leader that anyone could remember. Secondly, he made judicious selections from his own compositional back-catalogue, combining nostalgia and recognisability with an openness of construction that allowed his group to function at maximum creative intensity. So we get fascinating new versions of "Sanctuary", "Masqualero", "Footprints" and "JuJu", plus, among other curiosities, a Shorter arrangement of Sibelius's famous "Valse Triste". The dialogue between all four musicians is something truly to savour: this will be a strong candidate for album of the year. --Keith Shadwick