Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas: Sound Prints 
‘Other Worlds’ (GreenLeaf Music)

Following the sad news that the great Wayne Shorter died early Thursday, I expected that evening’s show at the Village Vanguard to be packed. The band playing all week was Sound Prints, a collaboration of two 21st century jazz giants, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas, inspired by Shorter: his music, his career, and his personal and artistic philosophy.

Shorter famously apprenticed with two legendary bandleaders, Art Blakey and Miles Davis, both of whom were veterans of the early days of bebop. By the time Shorter came into his own, that original modern jazz revolution had splintered into many different directions: there was still bebop, but also what some called hard bop, West Coast cool, a strain of the classically influenced chamber jazz of Dave Brubeck, and, more recently, the free jazz of Ornette Coleman, the even more avant-garde jazz of Cecil Taylor, and modal jazz.  

Shorter’s great strength was that he was fully immersed in all of these approaches, and his music was never just one thing or just one style, but rather assimilated all the possibilities of modern and postmodern jazz. Shorter also had a flair for wrapping up the whole package in a veneer of science fiction, fantasy, and spirituality — something akin to the outer space antics of Sun Ra, but with his own unique take.

In 2008, Messrs. Lovano and Douglas participated together in a Wayne Shorter songbook project under the aegis of the San Francisco Jazz Collective. They launched their quintet Sound Prints in 2013 and recorded what became their debut album live at the Monterey Jazz Festival that year. Over the last decade, in between copious releases of their own, they’ve put out two subsequent albums, “Scandal” (2017) and “Other Worlds” (2020). Pianist Lawrence Fields is on all of these projects, and while bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Joey Baron play on all three albums, Yasushi Nakamura and Rudy Royston were on bass and drums at the Vanguard.

On Thursday, they began the first set with a Wayne Shorter classic, “Juju,” and I confess that even though it’s a tune from his classic 1964 Blue Note album that I know well, I had a hard time recognizing it — not necessarily a bad thing. The 1964 version is much more solidly rhythmic, with sharp accents that make it danceable, whereas the Sound Prints interpretation, which begins with a solo drum introduction, is dreamy and surreal, like a ballet in which everything is moving slowly, but purposefully. Mr. Fields’s keyboard starts skittering behind the drums, before the two horns enter and play a much slowed-down version of the familiar tune, deliberately not always totally together, which contributes to the hazy, out-of-focus feeling.

“Space Explorations,” the first tune on “Other Worlds,” followed “Juju” and directly led into a much shorter piece titled “Shooting Stars.” The two horns enter together, and sort of hover in mid-air: It’s not hard to believe that they’re exploring some kind of space, be it inner or outer. Mr. Lovano plays a long solo in what musicians once called “strolling” fashion, meaning that the pianist drops out and he just works with the bass and drums.  

The quintet also played several other tunes from the most recent album in very different rhythm styles. Mr. Douglas’s “Manitou” is the closest thing to a waltz, and Mr. Lovano’s “Midnight March” had the rest of the quintet marching in sync along to a rigid tempo laid down by Mr. Baron. 

After “Midnight March,” Messrs. Lovano and Douglas both spoke for the only time in the evening, paying brief but appropriate tributes to Shorter and delineating how his music inspired this band — even though the majority of the tunes that they play are their own.  They concluded the Thursday set with Mr. Douglas’s “Life on Earth,” in which the title may be an indicator that this is not a Shorter-style space exploration, but the most down-to-earth, well-grounded piece in their repertoire, a slice of highly hummable post bop, not fuzzy or surreal but well-defined, with crisp and concise improvisations by the three main soloists. 

Now 10 years into its history, Sound Prints is one of the major groups of our time. All the members of the quintet, whether live or on the albums, make special contributions, especially Mr. Douglas (who, as he grows older, increasingly resembles Alec Guiness), with his distinctive trumpet sound and noteworthy compositions.  

Still, my main reason for listening is Joe Lovano, who brings a highly personal warmth and great emotional resonance to everything he plays, whether it’s a romantic ballad from the great American songbook or some far-out tune that happened to drop in on the band from outer space.