Wayne Shorter, speaking to NPR in February:
Jazz shouldn’t have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that’s required to sound like jazz. For me, the word ‘jazz’ means, ‘I dare you.’ The effort to break out of something is worth more than getting an A in syncopation. This music, it’s dealing with the unexpected. No one really knows how to deal with the unexpected. How do you rehearse the unknown?
Wayne on the title Mysterious Traveller:
“Mysterious Traveller meant that comet Kohoutek [the overhyped celestial event of 1973/74], which was a mysterious visitor–so we had that cover of a comet over Madagascar. It was a mystery about where was it born, and that means our life too, here we are: all mysterious travelers. The title also came from a radio show that came on every Friday when I was growing up: this guy got on a train and told you a story.”
— JazzTimes, June 2002