Jazz Condition -- UPI Arts & Entertainment

The finest jazz is made by a band that works night after night and that takes the stage or bandstand with no over-planning or expectations, playing nothing by formula or rote. Collective improvisation should allow no coasting but should encourage the sound of surprise.

Imagine then last year's re-emergence of composer-saxophonist Wayne Shorter to make an extended tour with a brand new band featuring three hot and promising players at least a generation behind him in chronology -- pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade.

Shorter is no stranger to hard-core jazz fans. He was a member of drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers before joining Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams as members of Miles Davis's second classic quintet from 1964-70. In his years with Miles and since, Shorter also became one of the music's most important, and sophisticated, composers.

Panamanian Perez earned his jazz stripes with Dizzy Gillespie's final band, the United Nation Jazz Orchestra, before forming his own trio and working to close the gaps between jazz and authentic Latin American music forms, most notably captured on his "Panamonk" and "Motherland" projects.

Blade's many artful affiliations inside and outside of jazz have included work with Joshua Redman and Joni Mitchell, in addition to leading his own bands. Patitucci for many years was a key player in Chick Corea's Elektric and Akoustic Bands. More recently, he has worked with his own unit and with Blade in the rhythm section on the Michael Brecker-Herbie Hancock-Roy Hargrove "Directions in Music" tour celebrating the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Last summer Shorter's new quartet began a tour in New York that moved upstate to Saratoga and then crossed the border to play the Montreal International Jazz Festival before an extensive series of dates in Europe and Japan before returning to the States.

The first couple of concerts were quite rocky as the band began to get acquainted, but the members soon developed into a unit built on trust, chemistry and risk-taking. They used many of Shorter's old compositions as a blueprint for change and reworked them each time out. Fragments of old rhythms and melodies often took new shapes with skill, grace, passionate playing, telepathy and humor.

Fortunately, a tape recorder was running most nights of the European leg. The result is a compilation of fine performances that has become Shorter's first all-acoustic album since 1967 and his first live concert album ever. "Footprints Live" was released this spring by Verve.

It is terrific for more than the most basic reasons. Shorter dug out seven of his own tunes, including the best-known "Footprints" and "JuJu," and added a fresh arrangement of Sibelius's "Valse Triste," which Shorter included on the 1965 album, "The Soothsayer."

Everything the quartet played was with a new spirit and feel, with the melody receiving obscure references at most.

The other tracks selected for the recording from hours of spontaneous performances are "Sanctuary," "Masqelero," Go," "Aung San Suu Kyi," and "Atlantis."

As various solos revealed sudden surprises, the players -- Perez and Blade in particular -- reacted with joy and approval. Those shouts, encouragements and moments of glee can be heard throughout the recording. They were spontaneous and unforced, like the music itself ...

Perez called the experience of making this music and touring with this quartet the most exhilarating of his career.

"With all my experiences I have had, playing with Wayne and this band was like doing post post-graduate research. The music kept developing and growing. It really reflected my dream for the perfect community, where everybody makes a vital contribution," Perez said. "There was an incredible mysterious feel to this. It's like climbing a mountain. When you reach the top, you want to see what's on the other side. And there is such caring for each other in this band. We are celebrating the music."

Feedback problems during an August 4 concert in Madarao, Japan, might have given other bandleaders fits. It prompted a Perez comment afterward to singer Kurt Elling, who had been in the audience that night.

Elling retold the story in a recent issue of Jazziz magazine: "Wayne said, 'What are you complaining about. This is the struggle to make music. It's always the same. Don't cry about it. This is what we do ... Feedback is just one more attack from the stuff that wants us to stop,'" Elling said Perez told him.

But there is no stopping Shorter -- the musician, the human, the humorist.

"At one point in the set when everyone has been covering painful ears over and over because of the intense feedback, Wayne squints like he's blowing and fingering his axe (saxophone), but no sound comes out," Elling said.

"At first all of us who are looking on furrow our brows together and think 'Oh, no! Now his mic's gone out.' But that's not it. He's miming. Cat is clowning. He's playing like he's blowing lightning licks but with a twinkle in his eye because he's not really playing at all. He's just tweaking the situation and giving the cats a boost -- laughing at the challenge," Elling said.

The quartet also went into the studio with additional musicians, including drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, pianist Brad Mehldau and percussionist Alex Acuna to work on a new recording due out in 2003.

While recorded before the initial tour, that should also be a dandy given the talent on hand.