Wayne Shorter - Gaia (2013)

Wayne Shorter - Gaia (2013)

Wayne Shorter (soprano saxophone)
Esperanza Spalding (voice, libretto, double bass)
Leo Genovese (piano)
Terri Lyne Carrington (drums)

Orchestra of the Polish Baltic Philharmonic
Clark Rundell (conductor)

Commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2013. This performance is from the Solidarity of Arts Festival, Gdańsk, 16 August 2014. (Video footage available here:    • Esperanza+, Solidarity of Arts festiv...  )

"‘I think everything has a purpose and everything has multi-uses,’ Shorter says. ‘To me, ‘Gaia’ is the planet we live on, and the fact we’re all here is symbolic of the limitless description of what life is about. What the libretto is saying is ‘wake up and dream,’ and the challenge is to bring that consciousness to anyone who’s taking for granted the surroundings that we live in and the planet that we live on and the universe that we’re in and the people we encounter. In other words, if we succumb to illusionary stuff and we become victims to a limited view of what life is supposed to be like, where are we? How do we progress? It’s not enough to be comfortable. We have to reach beyond. That’s what this piece is saying." [...] "He wanted it to be a living organism, like Gaia, and to evolve and change according to what was happening at every live performance of it," [Spalding] says." (Oakland Free Press)

" 'Gaia' was a murky, thick-set monster of a piece, 26 1/2 minutes in length [...] massive, slow-moving, opaque textures; sometimes tracking Wayne’s distinctive long, snaking melodic lines on soprano; treating the sections of the orchestra as blocs [...] Shorter — who, unbelievably, turns 80 years young this August — chimed in discreetly on soprano sax; Spalding sounded luminous even when stretched to the uppermost reaches of her range." (Richard S. Ginell, Variety)

R.I.P. Wayne Shorter