Alan Shorter


Alan Shorter was an American free jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player, and the older brother of composer and saxophone player Wayne Shorter.

Biography

Shorter was born in the Ironbound District in Newark, New Jersey. He started on alto saxophone, but switched to trumpet after graduating from high school. He attended Howard University but soon rebelled against the ultra-conservative atmosphere and dropped out. He later graduated from New York University.
He played his first professional gigs with a local bebop big band called the Jackie Bland Band.In his early years, he focused on bebop before shifting to free jazz, a style he maintained throughout his career apart from a six-month period in a U.S. Army Band.
Shorter recorded two albums as a leader: Orgasm and Tes Esat. Both were out of print for many years until re-issued by Verve Records in 2004 and 2005, respectively. He also recorded five albums with saxophonist Archie Shepp, including the classic Four for Trane, two albums with Marion Brown, one album with Alan Silva, and made an appearance on one of his brother's albums. Several of these albums feature his unusual compositions, his most famous being "Mephistopheles".
In the mid-1960s, Shorter moved to Europe, leading his own avant-garde gigs in Geneva and Paris. His style of free jazz sometimes proved to be too far-out for European audiences, but he generally found European audiences more receptive than those in the U.S. Eventually, he returned to the United States, where he taught briefly at Bennington College but otherwise faded into obscurity. He died of a ruptured aorta in Los Angeles, California in 1988, at age 55, shortly after becoming engaged to Ruth Ann Hancock, a cousin of Herbie Hancock.
Shorter's playing is comparable to that of Don Cherry, but with a more aggressive, anarchic bent. His own albums feature his groups functioning as a unit, rather than focusing on his own singular virtuosity. Reportedly, Shorter's musical style was akin to his personality: deep and intellectual, thought sometimes intentionally strange.

Discography

As leader

With Marion Brown
  • Marion Brown Quartet
  • Juba-Lee
With The New York Art Quartet
  • Call It Art
With Archie Shepp
  • Four for Trane
  • Archie Shepp and the Full Moon Ensemble
  • Pitchin Can
  • Doodlin
  • Coral Rock
With Wayne Shorter
With Alan Silva
  • Seasons
With François Tusques'
  • ''Intercommunal Music''

    Written Material

  • ‘allan shorter et le monstre magnétique’ , Jazz Hot, June 1967: 24-5.
  • Alan Shorter, Orgasm. c.1968.
  • Alan Shorter, ‘Distension.’ Actuel, May 1969: 36–38.
  • Val Wilmer, Tes Esat, 1970.
  • Richard Williams, Parabolic. c.1969.
  • Interview by Richard Williams. Melody Maker, May 1, 1971: 18.
  • Elisabeth Chandet, ‘Jazz En Direct: Les Nuits du Vézelay’, Jazz Magazine, April 1971: 10-11.
  • Philippe Carles, ‘Jazz En Direct: Alan Shorter Tes Esat’, Jazz Magazine, January 1973: 8-9.
  • Ron Welburn, ‘Alan Shorter’. Black World, October 1973: 48, 67.
  • Alan Shorter, ‘Vivre la New Musique’, Jazz Magazine, February 1974: 11.
  • J.R. Taylor, ‘Album Briefs’ , Jazz Digest, Vol. 3, no. 1 : 19
  • Alan Shorter, , Cadence, Vol. 2, no. 1 : 8
  • Philippe Carles, , Tes Esat CD re-issue, 2004.
  • Amiri Baraka, ‘Reissuing Orgasm’ , ‘Wayne Shorter on his brother, Alan ’. Orgasm CD re-issue, 1998. Both texts reprinted in Baraka, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music. CD booklet also contains ‘A Word from Rashied Ali’.
  • Philippe Robert, ‘Schizophonia’. In Philippe Robert and Guillaume Belhomme, Free Fight: This Is Our Thing
  • ‘vorgarten’, ‘for me it’s NEW music! – alan shorter ’. . Online, Rolling Stone Forum, 2012: http://forum.rollingstone.de/foren/topic/alan-shorter/
  • David Grundy, 'Why?' The Parabolic New Music of Alan Shorter'. , Issue 71, June 2020.