Strait Project - Water Dance (2024) [Hi-Res]

Eight original compositions inspired by the art of Wayne Shorter, saxophonist, philosopher and guru. He was the custodian of the artistic legacy of John Coltrane, one of the most refined composers and arrangers in the history of jazz. His was a life engaged in a continual reflection on the mystery of life itself. Buddhism, mysticism and art were the right connection for existence. “Music – said Shorter – has an intrinsic, extramusical meaning, playing means reaching unexplored places and spaces” and WATER DANCE conveys this message to the full.
The unexplored land is the Water element.
WATER DANCE is the Dance of Water or better Dance in the Water, Sea Water and the Sea is the Strait between Sicily and Calabria.
It is clear from the first piece that the musical space from where the dance begins is the seabed. Charybdis, mythological figure mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Eneide, is a whirlpool that, “swallows vast streams – three times a day, to then belch them back – rising to the stars”. The vortex here is produced by the currents of jazz, Spanish rhythms and Mediterranean dances of the pieces Cariddi, Bloom, Abuela Cigarra and Balla con me, the jazz waltz of Rebecca’s Theme, along with European Jazz. And those sound dimensions unequivocally traceable to the ECM label of Trying to do the Job, Dorico and Ron Miller.

A whirlpool first under then over the sea, a vortex from which elements emerge, as if launched by an underwater catapult, which lead us back to Shorter’s main stylistic feature and to those open spaces which sometimes convey a sense of displacement to the ear and which delightfully freshened by ever agile and flowing harmonic/rhythmic solutions. With grace and delicacy, the original compositions alternate with meditative moments that trace a transversal plane from afar to sublimate in the themes of Footprints and Infant Eyes, two absolute masterpieces by Shorter, as a sort of thanksgiving to the style and spirituality of the Maestro.
Waterdance feels like wading in deep waters, mysterious but benevolent, like immersing safely and rising to the surface, like exploring the abysses of the human soul where you advance to discover something that usually makes us better.