New live Wayne Shorter Quartet album to be released on Blue Note

A new recording from revered saxophonist Wayne Shorter is to be released as Celebration, Volume 1 on Blue Note on 23 August and captures him and his top-flight Quartet of Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade in their prime in 2014. The album is the first in a series of Blue Note archival releases that Shorter curated before his death in 2023, and is a previously unreleased live recording of Shorter’s acclaimed group captured live at the Stockholm Jazz Festival in Sweden.

The album adds to this celebrated band’s recorded legacy that began in 2002 with Footprints Live! which was released on Verve and was the saxophonist’s first album under his own name for the label, followed by Alegría (2003) and Beyond the Sound Barrier (2005) also on Verve, while the 2010 live recording, Without a Net, marked the group’s debut for Blue Note that was released in 2013.

Celebration captures the band’s deep musical empathy with a set of newly improvised takes on many of their favourite tracks from their repertoire of the time: ‘Zero Gravity to the 15th Dimension’, ‘Smilin' Through’, ‘Zero Gravity to the 11th Dimension’, ‘Zero Gravity to the 12th Dimension’, ‘Zero Gravity – Unbound’, ‘Orbit; 7. Edge of the World (End Title)’, ‘Zero Gravity to the 90th Dimension’, ‘Lotus’ and ‘She Moves Through The Fair’.

Blue Note will also be celebrating Shorter’s legacy with several reissues of his classic albums including a Tone Poet Vinyl Edition of Odyssey of Iska (1970), re-released on 5 July, a Classic Vinyl Edition of JuJu (1964) re-released on 16 August, and a Blue Note Authorised Dealer exclusive blue vinyl reissue of Speak No Evil (1964) which will be available from 9 August at participating independent record stores. Celebration, Volume 1 is available for pre-order now on limited edition Blue Note Store exclusive colour vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital download.

For more info visit www.bluenote.com/artist/wayne-shorter/