Jack stack martin city5/4/2023 ![]() Here, though, understanding had driven David Breskin, who obviously didn’t just interview Wayne but followed the by-then old “New Journalism” method of observing him. Even the light editing of straight interviews could render the better parts of him invisible. Just as problematic for Wayne were music writing’s dominant styles, which tended toward a distant authority or glossy hipness that obscured much of his music and magic. For Wayne, conversation was relating about everything possible, all the fun was in how you said a thing, and most things he said were layered with significance. He simply didn’t work with the interviewer’s game of oneupsmanship in which being first or getting more more more on the record was winning. By then I’d already spent weeks on tour and at home with him, long enough to see that Wayne and conventional music writing were an impossible fit. Not much on the page had squared with my own perceptions of Wayne. Illustrated with lyrical photographs that Breskin shot himself. This piece not only sounded but felt like Wayne. All Wayne’s unique words, but orchestrated into two dozen condensed statements that delivered whole symphonies of meaning. When I got to the actual “24 Solos” of the title, I was even more knocked out. Breskin’s introduction used Wayne’s Buddhist chanting as an invocation to his character-with deep listening, this intro suggested, we could follow the hazy swirl of Wayne myth into the dense beauty of his life and music until we circled in close enough to perceive his humanity at the center of it all. This article, titled “24 Shorter Solos,” sounded like extensive analysis of Wayne’s improv technique. In 2002, research for my Wayne Shorter book led me to a 1981 Musician magazine piece by David Breskin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |