Jean-Pascal Vachon

Just a few decades ago, jazz was almost exclusively enjoyed in small, dark and smoky clubs. Preferably at night. It seemed that jazz and sun didn’t go together.

Things have certainly changed, as summer jazz festivals explode in and outside of Vienna, and now offer the possibility to both swing and get a suntan! Imagine a typical Austrian village with a spectacular mountain backdrop and an idyllic lake – perhaps an outdoor paradise. Now picture the biggest names of the jazz avant-garde battalion. Sound like heaven?

A recent column was dedicated to the best places to hear live jazz in Vienna. This time it’s the best places to get our spiritual food: jazz recordings. Of course, I don’t pretend this list is exhaustive, much less impartial. Let’s say that you’ll simply find here some hints.

“People ask us, ‘When do you rehearse?’ We don’t. How can we rehearse what we don’t know?” Wayne Shorter

OK, let’s be honest: how often do we jazz-writers use such expressions as “the last giant,” “the legendary,” or “the best of his generation”? It may seem that we resort to hyperboles to compensate for a lack of imagination or because we suffer from a tendency to exaggerate in order to grab your attention…

Yet, when it comes to Wayne Shorter, what else can we say? He’s without a doubt one of the most influential postwar jazz tenor saxophonists, together with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane and a prolific composer whose tunes have become the pillars of modern jazz repertoire, interpreted by thousands of musicians, from students to professionals.