Wayne Shorter Festival

Few jazz elders have remained more staunchly committed to improvisational risk than Wayne Shorter. Celebrate the 81-year-old genius here with Jazz at Lincoln Center's three-tiered weekend fest, which features a group of rising-star instrumentalists, dancers and dramatists interpreting Shorter's early work at Dizzy's May 15–17; a May 15 and 16 stand from trumpeter Dave Douglas and saxist Joe Lovano's excellent Shorter-inspired quintet, Sound Prints (heard on a new Blue Note disc, Live at Monterey Jazz Festival) at the Appel Room; and a May 14–16 Rose Theater collaboration between Shorter himself and Wynton Marsalis's Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.