Atlantis is the sixteenth album by Wayne Shorter. It was released on the Columbia label in 1985 and was Shorter's first solo album since 1974. The recording is notable in Shorter's body of work both for its relative lack of improvisation and for the high level of its compositions and group arrangements. Brazilian and Funk rhythms are featured on several tracks, as is a mixture of electric and acoustic instrumentation. The composition "Shere Khan, the Tiger" was previously recorded by a group inc...
Atlantis is the sixteenth album by Wayne Shorter. It was released on the Columbia label in 1985 and was Shorter's first solo album since 1974. The recording is notable in Shorter's body of work both for its relative lack of improvisation and for the high level of its compositions and group arrangements. Brazilian and Funk rhythms are featured on several tracks, as is a mixture of electric and acoustic instrumentation. The composition "Shere Khan, the Tiger" was previously recorded by a group including Shorter and Carlos Santana on the latter's 1980 album The Swing of Delight. Several of the compositions on this album would continue to feature in Shorter's repertoire well into 2012, most notably the title piece.
The cover art for the album is a pastel portrait of Shorter by actor Billy Dee Williams. Compositionally, "Atlantis" is noteworthy due to the inclusion of unusual intervallic melodies and a sense of economy and space generated through the use of parallel dominant 9th suspended chords coupled with contrapuntal bass lines. This approach is exemplified by the composition "On the Eve of Departure" which programmatically resembles "When worlds Collide" the George Pal Sci-Fi classic.
Personnel
Wayne Shorter: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Jim Walker: flute, alto-flute, piccolo
Yaron Gershovsky: piano
Michiko Hill: piano
Joseph Vitarelli: synthesizer, piano
Michael Hoenig: synthesizer programming
Larry Klein: electric bass
Ralph Humphrey: drums
Alex Acuña: drums, percussion
Lenny Castro: percussion
Diana Acuña, Dee Dee Bellson, Nani Brunel, Trove Davenport, Sanaa Larhan, Edgy Lee, Kathy Lucien: vocals
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