The first portal transports the viewer to the whirlwind of New York in the mid-to-late Fifties through to when Shorter joined Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet in late 1964. But when the acid wore off, the Haight-Ashbury contingent left Eastern teachings in the dust – Shorter practiced until he died. No doubt the New Ageism of the period influenced him. ![]() He took up the religion in the early Seventies as a way to deal with his daughter’s seizures and mental illness, and it stuck. They do not believe in a beginning or an end. This works because Shorter was – as is his best friend, Herbie Hancock – a committed Buddhist. Throughout the documentary, some of the most important narration is performed by a boy acting as a young Shorter, as when he says: ‘I am searching for an indestructible happiness.’ The third portal (episode) opens with the Herman Hesse adage: ‘The more one matures the younger one grows.’ This cosmic profundity lurks at every turn, but without pretension. Zero Gravity, directed by Dorsay Alavi, does a magnificent job of emphasising Shorter’s childlike imagination, which was to propel his musical creativity even to his final years. It was at the relatively late age of 16 that he took up clarinet lessons. He was well-behaved but, after getting caught playing truant at the movies, he was transferred to a course he was more interested in. A creative spirit, he was sent to Newark Arts High School. Wayne would listen to mystery shows on the wireless and at 15 years old produced his first full-length comic book. An empty space of concrete and gravel became Mars or the rainforest, a medieval castle or the bottom of the ocean. The Shorters’ leaning tower of Newark in the city’s Ironbound district was a happy childhood home where Wayne and Alan let their imaginations run wild in the neighbouring vacant lot. Even though their house had a little lean to it, owing to wonky foundations, his mother would assure Wayne never to be embarrassed about bringing anyone home. Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1933 to working-class parents who cultivated their children’s creativity and resilience. ![]() None of it would sound the way it does without Wayne Shorter. But hard bop, post-bop, avant-garde jazz, modal jazz, funk fusion, Brazilian jazz take your pick. ![]() The young brothers, buying into the rebellious nature of bebop, crumpled their Oxford button-down shirts, tilted the brow of their trilbies over their eyes and wore full-length jackets to invoke a floating effect when they walked Alan chose the alias ‘Doctor Strange’ and Wayne went by the nom de jazz ‘Mr. He may have missed out on bebop he was still a teenager trying his best to mimic Charlie Parker on the high school bandstand with his brother Alan – an interesting free jazz trumpeter in his own right. From a comic-obsessed youth in 1940s Newark to one of jazz’s most dynamic and inventive players, Wayne Shorter was at the vanguard of every major turn in jazz from 1960 onward. ![]() Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, 2023, directed by Dorsay Alavi, is available on Amazon PrimeĮight years in the making, the new three-part documentary Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, manages to capture the limitless imagination of one of the great composers of modern music who sadly made his ‘flight into the unknown’ back in March this year.
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