On Friday, 15 October 1965, Wayne Shorter recorded certainly one of his most progressive albums for Blue Observe: The All Seeing Eye. Again then, Shorter, then 32, was a key member of jazz pathfinder Miles Davis’ quintet, having joined the trumpeter’s band the earlier yr. That was additionally when the New Jersey saxophonist started a parallel solo recording profession at Blue Observe Data.
Shorter’s debut album for Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff’s iconic jazz label was Evening Dreamer, recorded in April 1964; a number of months later, he reduce what turned his second LP, Juju. By the point that he went into Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey recording studio to put down the tracks for The All Seeing Eye, Shorter had already produced six albums for the label in an amazingly fertile 18-month interval.
The All Seeing Eye got here within the wake of The Soothsayer and Etcetera, two Shorter LPs from earlier 1965 periods that have been held over by Blue Observe till a a lot later date (they didn’t truly see the sunshine of day till 1979 and 1980, respectively). Melodically, harmonically and conceptually, The All Seeing Eye proved markedly totally different from Communicate No Evil, Shorter’s earlier album on Blue Observe.
“A wider range of colours and textures”
The Newark-born saxophonist’s fame as a composer was blossoming at this level, and for The All Seeing Eye he led a a lot bigger ensemble than on his earlier studio dates. Becoming a member of him within the studio have been two of his colleagues from the Miles Davis band – pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter – plus trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (who doubled on flugelhorn), alto saxophonist James Spaulding, trombonist Grachan Moncur III, and drummer Joe Chambers. On the album’s remaining monitor, the septet expanded to an octet with the addition of Shorter’s elder brother, Alan, on flugelhorn.
Although the saxophonist had served his apprenticeship in Artwork Blakey’s “hard bop academy”, The Jazz Messengers, from 1959-64, The All Seeing Eye – whose title referred to the omniscience of God – appeared a world away from so-called straight-ahead jazz. Shorter described the album as “about life, the universe and God”, and introduced his imaginative and prescient to life by utilizing, he stated, “a wider range of colours and textures”. The music was daring, uncompromising, and exploratory, and had extra in frequent with the modal strategy of John Coltrane and the free jazz experimentation of Ornette Coleman, although finally its uniqueness meant that it might have solely come from the thoughts of Wayne Shorter.
The prolonged title music begins with a stately four-part brass fanfare – Shorter’s musical illustration of God surveying his work – earlier than Joe Chambers’ thundering drums provoke a sooner tempo. He’s joined by Ron Carter’s fast-walking bass, and collectively they set up a swirling swing rhythm over which there are lengthy, discursive solos by the primary protagonists.
Starting with portentous low piano notes, “Genesis” is Shorter’s sonic depiction of the act of creation and is outlined by a succession of various moods, rhythms and textures that indicate one thing unfurling step by step however repeatedly. “There are clusters of starts, species of life,” Shorter defined to journalist Nat Hentoff in 1965. “I tried to give ‘Genesis’ a feeling of open-endedness because, once begun, the creative process keeps going.”
The pulsating “Chaos” is a quick, fiery quantity pushed by Carter and Chambers’ fixed rhythmic pulse, which retains the music flowing whereas sustaining its inherent sense of rigidity. Over this maelstrom, Shorter lets rip with a violent solo. Ruminating on the monitor, he later defined, “‘Chaos’ is what man has done, to a certain extent, to God’s creation. The music mirrors conflicts, wars, disagreements – the difficulty men have in understanding each other.”
“The Devil is unpredictable”
After the confusion of “Chaos” comes the repose of “Face Of The Deep,” which Shorter defined as “God reflecting on what he has created.” As such, it’s a calmer, meditative and extra measured piece outlined by beautiful brass interaction.
With its tense, nearly chilling ostinato rhythms, “Mephistopheles,” the album’s finale, is rather more ominous. Meant as a musical portrait of the Satan, it was composed by Shorter’s flugelhorn-playing brother Alan. “It’s asymmetrical,” noticed Shorter within the album’s unique sleevenotes. “The melody moves in an unpredictable way because the Devil is unpredictable.”
On its launch, in 1966, The All Seeing Eye’s cosmic imaginative and prescient and radical “free bop” aesthetic definitely attracted consideration. Although thought to be one of the crucial difficult LPs in Wayne Shorter’s Blue Observe canon, it’s definitely value rediscovery. The album could have been overshadowed by extra in style works the likes of Communicate No Evil, however it has grown in stature through the years, and sounds as strikingly recent and fashionable because it did when it was recorded.
Although it was the primary instance of Wayne Shorter exploring metaphysics by means of music, it wasn’t the final, as his 2018 album, the comic-book-inspired Emanon, clearly exhibits. By the point of that recording, in fact, the younger lion had turn out to be an previous grasp, however the sense of curiosity, marvel and imaginative and prescient he displayed on The All Seeing Eye stays an abiding characteristic of Shorter’s work.
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