Perez, Blade and Patitucci burnish the legacy of their mentor Wayne Shorter

As a lifelong fan of science fiction, fantasy and comic books, saxophonist Wayne Shorter wrote compositions that are their own kind of interstellar journeys and helped to shape modern jazz. Melodies that seem simple on the surface contain myriad harmonic complexities and rhythmic shifts. Shorter’s impact included his early 1960s hard bop blueprints for Art Blakey, oblique pieces for Miles Davis’ classic quintet later that decade and co-founding the influential jazz-rock fusion band Weather Report in the 1970s. But then these achievements became a launching pad for a remarkable late-career flight.

Shorter went in a new direction in 2000 when he formed a quartet of sharp younger musicians who had grown up as his fans: pianist Danilo Pérez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. Along with radically reworking beloved standards, Shorter constantly presented his bandmates with imaginative ideas.

Their impromptu changes onstage were captured on such albums as “Footprints Live” (2002) and “Beyond the Sound Barrier” (2005). Their intuitive four-way dialogue continued to grow as they remained collaborators until a few years before Shorter’s death in 2023 at the age of 89.

Recent recordings and tribute performances reaffirm how bracing this musical family was. The album “Celebration, Volume 1” was released in August and is is the start of a planned sequence of archival records from Blue Note that Shorter curated just before his passing. Meanwhile, Pérez, Blade and Patitucci, who continue to explore their former leader’s music, are bringing their tour with guest saxophonist Mark Turner (at left) to Chicago for an SCP Jazz concert on Oct. 25.

As this group was about to hit the road, Blade recalled that Shorter always put himself through the same tests that he designed for his colleagues. “Although Wayne had a very clear and composed vision of creating together as a quartet, he was always searching deeper within himself and outside of himself for that unknown, unheard, unseen potential to be revealed,” Blade said. “His patience and persistence cleared the way for us without imposing or forcing anything.”

Pérez reflected on how the quartet devised uncanny terms for Shorter’s leadership. One of these was about getting acclimated to traveling into unexpected territory: They called it “fear training.” Another is an invented word that described how Shorter would suddenly devise new works and how they came up with such collective compositions as “Zero Gravity to the 10th Power” on the 2013 album “Without a Net.”

“Wayne was into the act of comprovising, which is the spontaneous connection between improvisation and composition,” Pérez said. “The desire to create something together in the moment, to touch upon human values or human connection that would inspire audiences to commit to creativity in whatever they were doing. It was, ’Let’s tap into the creative energy so we can send that to the audience so they can take changes in their life, their work, whatever they’re doing.’ We all experienced this type of music we called zero gravity. We aim to go where no sound has gone before.”

“Wayne Shorter viewed his music as the story of his life. And when you listen to Wayne’s music, you’re going to see that you see all those pieces he wrote as sentences, or titles to tell that story.” — Danilo Pérez

Throughout their time together, Pérez became aware that Shorter saw his work as chapters in an ongoing tale. With the current tour and archival reissues, additional parts of this chronicle should become more revealing.

“Sometimes he would bring pieces to us that were incredible, and we’d say, ‘Let’s play this piece,’ ” Pérez said. “And he’d say, ‘Let’s start all over. If you like it, pick it, but let’s not play it like that.’ He had that childlike quality that I still try to figure out. I think he viewed his music as the story of his life. And when you listen to Wayne’s music, you’re going to see that you see all those pieces he wrote as sentences, or titles to tell the story of his life. He’s one of the few composers, like Thelonious Monk, where you can go from one motif to another and find a narrative in all those pieces.”

Turner will take on an especially challenging role in filling Shorter’s instrumental shoes. But Pérez contends that he fulfills what their leader had envisioned.

“I see this opportunity as Wayne taught us to share the mission, share the experience we had, and Mark has been investigating and researching on his own and has such a unique take on playing, music and composing,” Pérez said. “We’re excited to unite those elements and open this space for his ideas to come and meld with us. We’re looking for thinkers and players who could continue the mission. We want to continue all the things with comprovising and fear training, and this idea of being in the moment of doing therapy together.”