TT 426: Leonard Bernstein and Wayne Shorter
both have birthdays on August 25
LB: born 1918
WS: born 1933
Leonard Bernstein continued conducting and playing the piano his whole life, but the composing slowed down. Few things from his last three decades are in the active repertoire. I suspect writing music was a problem partly because Bernstein didn’t have much of a defined style. (Becoming world-renowned for conducting Mahler symphonies would not have helped this issue.)
As a composer, most of Bernstein’s best things are from the 1950s, and the best of those are obvious pastiches. The more obvious, the better.
The operetta Candide has a complicated history. Two pieces are familiar: the symphonic overture and the virtuoso coloratura soprano aria, “Glitter and Be Gay.”
The original cast album recording by Barbara Cook of “Glitter and Be Gay” is one of the treasures of recorded sound.
Almost everything Bernstein writes in “Glitter and Be Gay” is a comic reflection of opera tradition. Of course, Bernstein is deadly serious as well. What is the line? The line between camp and serious? The line between happy and sad? The line between silly and tragic?
The only thing “American” in this music are a few rhythmic syncopations. Still, a few is more than none, and they certainly make a difference.
Barbara Cook! Good lord. One of kind.
Weather Report’s most successful album commercially was Heavy Weather from 1977. A certain charisma is undeniable, all the elements come together, including extraordinary new bassist Jaco Pastorius. One of my favorite tracks is “Palladium,” written by Wayne Shorter.
Unlike Bernstein, Wayne Shorter had discernible thumbprints on almost everything he composed from beginning to end. However, Shorter didn’t quite figure out how to consistently marshal forces after a certain point, and this hesitancy is just like Bernstein. The annals of musical history weighed heavily on these gentlemen, especially after they were acclaimed as having actively helped write that very history.
The early Shorter jazz albums are casual and immortal, but after 1967 or so, one can perceive the effort involved in bringing projects to term. Clearly, Shorter wanted to compose longer pieces. He mastered short form jazz tunes — indeed, he mastered them more than anybody! — and the next task was expanding the duration of the written material. For decades that process involved dance rhythm: beats, funk, and world music.
“Palladium” is the name of a club, the Palladium Ballroom, a spot that Shorter knew well. According to Juliet McMains:
New York’s Palladium Ballroom is commonly revered as the birthplace of modern Latin dancing. Known as “the home of the mambo,” the Palladium was New York’s most popular venue for Latin dance music from 1947 to 1966. It featured live Latin music four nights a week, frequently played by “The Big Three” orchestras: Machito and his Afrocubans, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez. Located near prominent nightclubs and theaters at 53rd St. and Broadway, the Palladium was significant for bringing Latin music to midtown Manhattan and for the racial and ethnic integration it engendered. Puerto Rican, Cuban, Italian, African-American, Irish, and Jewish patrons of all classes filled its dance floors and rubbed elbows with celebrities, especially on Wednesday nights when “Killer Joe” Piro hosted the popular mambo contest and professional show.
As a teenager, Wayne Shorter not only danced the mambo, but also wrote some mambos for his high-school band led by Nat Phipps, a band that even played at the Palladium. In Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter by Michelle Mercer, Shorter says that Celia Cruz danced to Shorter’s piece “Midget Mambo” at the Palladium Ballroom.
Weather Report’s engine room at the time of Heavy Weather included drummer Alex Acuña from Peru and percussionist Manolo Badrena from Puerto Rico. The groove on “Palladium” is frankly insane, including Joe Zawinul’s piano stabs and of course Pastorius’s revolutionary bass.
On top of this serious groove, Shorter offers page after page of inspiration. It’s all written out, and each section follows smoothly from the next. The chords are complex — Wayne’s ever-present signature harmony — but those complex chords do nothing to hold back that earthy Palladium Ballroom beat.
Three footnotes. 1. Pat Martino is another 8.25. baby. 2. Curtis Institute of Music brings Candide to the stage in April as part of the Curtis Centennial programming. 3. The recently landed Wayne Shorter Celebration Vol 1 on Blue Note is outstanding.
Have loved "Palladium" since the old days, and has long been one of my Wayne favorites. I'm no music theoretician, but what I remember best about it is that it keeps sneakily refusing to resolve, then resolves all of a sudden, spectacularly, at about 3:15. Never have thought that had anything to do with mambo however.