Best of - Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding: Jazz Invention

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wayne Shorter was a legendary saxophonist and composer whose career began in the 1950's and spanned the development of modern jazz. Mr. Shorter died this week, at the age of 89. To honor his life and music, we are bringing back this episode, which originally aired in 2017. It features Wayne Shorter and a jazz artist 50 years his junior: Esperanza Spalding. Ms. Spalding is a bass player, composer, lyricist and singer - and one of the most exciting artists in contemporary jazz. Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding may have come of age during different jazz eras and in different parts of the country, but they became friends and artistic soulmates, who shared many of the same views about making music and the creative process. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2017-2023

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Alice.
0:22.0	For well over half a century, Wayne Shorter had a hand in shaping modern jazz as a composer and a saxophone player. We mourn Wayne Shorter's death this week at the age of 89
0:26.2	and we want to celebrate his life and his contributions to music by replaying our
0:31.8	episode from October of 2017.
0:35.0	That episode featured Mr. Shorter
0:38.0	and one of his protégés and collaborators,
0:41.0	Esperanza Spalding. The year after the episode aired, just to give you an update,
0:47.0	these two jazz greats 50 years apart in age dove headlong into a project together, a project that Wayne Shorter had dreamed
0:56.6	of for much of his long career, creating an opera based on the Greek myth of Iphigenia. His health was failing and
1:06.5	Ms Spalding was determined to help him complete the work so they hold up for a
1:12.2	year and in 2020 and 2021 the wildly experimental opera with
1:18.5	sets by Frank Gehry was staged in Boston in in LA, and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center.
1:27.0	So, you won't hear Mr. Shorter or Ms. Balding discuss a Virginia in our episode,
1:34.0	but it is moving to listen to these two fearless artists,
1:38.6	knowing that they were about to make Wayne Shorter's
1:41.9	final creative dream come true.
1:45.0	Just like, Just a note before I hit play. The episode's original air date was tied to an auspicious anniversary in the world of jazz, so don't let the opening throw you.
2:07.0	Theloneus monk Thelonious monk, the high priest of Beepop, would have been a hundred years old this
2:18.9	month, October 2017. The influence he had on jazz as both a musician and a composer is hard to overstate.
2:44.0	Well, we decided to celebrate Monk's birthday with an episode about two jazz
2:50.0	grades who are inheritors of his legacy.
2:53.0	One has clocked seven decades in jazz.
	...

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