One of the Vineyard’s most versatile working musicians, bassist and guitarist Eric T. Johnson, stepped out as a bandleader Monday night at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center.
Mr. Johnson assembled a top-flight quintet for a concert devoted to music by revered jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, a leader in contemporary jazz from the late 1950s until his death in 2023.
Fellow Island music pro and longtime collaborator Jeremy Berlin played electric piano, with a fiery front line of tenor saxophonist Scott Avidon and trumpeter Jason Palmer. Brooke Sofferman, drummer for the Either/Orchestra in Boston, rounded out the rhythm section.
Mr. Johnson, who skips his middle initial when performing with local bands such as Pickpocket, played upright bass and introduced the concert as a focus on Mr. Shorter’s early career, from 1959 to the mid-1960s.
“You might know Weather Report, [but] we’re really sticking more to the... foundational days of Wayne’s compositions,” Mr. Johnson said.
The show opened with three energetic hard-bop blowing sessions on tunes from the 1959 Vee-Jay Records album Introducing Wayne Shorter: Blues à la Carte, Callaway Went That-a-Way and Harry’s Last Stand.
Mr. Johnson then turned to Mr. Shorter’s years as tenor saxophonist and music director for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
“It was really the leading hard bop band of the time,” Mr Johnson said.
After a bluesy, swinging The Chess Player, from the 1960 Blakey/Messengers album The Big Beat, the quintet delivered a hard-driving Ping Pong, recorded in 1961.
“This is a tune I’ve wanted to play with a band for a long time, but you need really great horn players,” Mr. Johnson said. “Fortunately, we have them here tonight.“
From Mr. Shorter’s 1964 album Speak No Evil, recorded as he was moving from hard-bop songwriting to a more expansive, modal approach, the group played the now-classic Infant Eyes and Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum.
“Wayne’s writing changed a lot between the Art Blakey period and when he eventually joined Miles [Davis] in the mid 1960s,” Mr. Johnson said.
“The harmony was less functional and more like a visual landscape, and that kind of makes sense, because Wayne was a visual artist first. He studied art in high school and didn’t pick up a clarinet until he was 16.”
Closing the concert, the quintet deftly navigated the angular, stutter-stepping Witch Hunt, another one of Mr. Shorter’s compelling mid-1960s tunes.
As bandleader, arranger and tim
ekeeper, Mr. Johnson played with deep understanding of the music but ceded much of the evening’s solo time to his band mates.
Mr. Davis and Mr. Palmer blazed with zeal, precision and creativity, while Mr. Sofferman added rhythmic color and Mr. Berlin stretched out on the jazz keyboard as he seldom gets the chance to do in his many Island appearances with Johnny Hoy and the Bluefish, other bands and on his own.
Built for the acoustic demands of 21st-century film soundtracks, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center also makes a fine jazz listening room, and executive director Richard Paradise said he wants to present more concerts in the theatre.
Monday’s sold-out show drew an
enthusiastic throng of Island jazz-lovers, who surged to their feet as one in a standing ovation after the last song.
“We hope to be back next year,” Mr. Johnson said.
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