2002 was the year Wayne Shorter was Artist in Residence at the North Sea Jazz Festival. He opened the event with a Friday, 12 July concert in the PAW Zaal at 6.30pm in a duet with Herbie Hancock, recreating the magic of their 1997 Verve album 1+1. I was at the festival that year, but missed this concert, choosing instead to divide my time between two of the 13 alternative concerts on at the same time (for the record, e.s.t. and Eivind Aarset's Électronique Noir). From the Herbie/Wayne duo concert comes ‘Meridianne – A Wood Sylph’ which appears on both CD and DVD of this excellent package. The following night on 13 July, Shorter performed a concert with his quartet in the Jan Steen Zaal, which I did see. The previous year Shorter had caused ripples in the jazz world with his superb Verve album Footprints Live! and his repertoire for the evening was largely drawn from this album, including the title track. Interestingly, Shorter's regular bassist John Patitucci was indisposed, and Christian McBride deputised. Their concert was one of the festival highlights of 2002. The quartet again appeared on Sunday 14 July at 4.30 pm in the PWA Zaal, this time accompanied by the Prima La Musica Orchestra under the baton of Dirk Vermeulen. I did not see this concert with the larger ensemble plus Shorter and the quartet, who performed ‘Orbits’ and ‘Midnight in Carlotta's Hair’. After these two performances, the quartet took centre stage for three numbers, ‘Smilin’ Through’, ‘Footprints’ and ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’. As a bonus on the DVD, three tracks are included from Shorter's 1986 appearance at North Sea. This is in the aftermath of Weather Report, and from around this period I recall seeing him with an all-girl line-up and caught this 1986 appearance on Sunday 13 July at 7pm on the Dakerras with Mitch Forman, Gary Willis and Tom Brechtlein. I remember not being tremendously impressed and see no reason to revise this judgment almost 30 years later. At the time he seemed to have lost direction, as indeed did Joe Zawinul, who also appeared at North Sea that year, on Friday 11 July, with a dreary band called Weather Update. Both performances suggested it would be downhill from the highs of Weather Report for them both. How wrong. Zawinul would bounce back in the Noughties with the hottest band on the circuit, the Zawinul Syndicate, and Shorter would surprise and delight the jazz world with the formation of his quartet, which picked up from where Miles Davis left off with the Plugged Nickel sessions in 1965.