“You can’t get any higher than him”: the legendary Wayne Shorter.
photo retrieved from Popperfoto via Getty Images.
With a career spanning more than 60 years and riddled with countless awards, Mr. Wayne Shorter recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader and has earned himself worldwide recognition and praise. The president of Blue Note Records, whom Shorter recorded many albums with, said elegantly of him: “Maestro Wayne Shorter was our hero, guru, and beautiful friend. His music possessed a spirit that came from somewhere way, way beyond and made this world a much better place. Likewise, his warmth and wisdom enriched the lives of everyone who knew him.” Shorter shared his brilliance through his specialization in the tenor and sometimes soprano saxophone, both of which he masterfully played in different styles over the course of his career. His lengthy reputation as a brilliant saxophonist and musical master allowed him to work with the best artists of each decade of his career, including multiple collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, Carlos Santana, Steely Dan, and Donald Byrd.
Born in 1933, Shorter grew up with no shortage of influences in his life. Having started his rise as a saxophonist in the early ‘50s, his first idols were the legendary Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and Coleman Hawkins. In 1959, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messenger as the saxophonist and in-house composer, and he remained there throughout the early ‘60s. After only a few years with them, Shorter had become the musical director of the group. His experience allowed him to process his voice and role as a saxophonist. During this early career stint, Shorter had established his instrumental contribution as lyrical, often characterizing and strongly overlaying the song, taking rightful prominence. With this refinement, Shorter then joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet for six years, where he got to explore a new level to his music. Fellow musician and author Ian Carr claimed that where Blakey’s hard-driving, straight-ahead rhythms brought out the muscularity of Shorter’s tenor saxophone skill, the “greater freedom of the Davis rhythm-section allowed him to explore new emotional and technical dimensions.” During his time with Davis, Shorter was able to contribute to and record for significant Davis albums, including the iconic Bitches Brew (1969). With Blakey and Davis, Shorter’s reputation as a central instrumentalist grew, his powerful and prominent role in his songs solidifying him as a brilliant, internationally recognized saxophonist only a decade into his career.
In 1970, Shorter formed the infamous Weather Report with keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul. He served initially as a co-leader with Zawinul, where they both wrote and performed together with rotating musicians, often forming a quintet with a bass guitarist, drummer, and percussionist. His role as an instrumentalist in a jazz group, however, switched upon joining Weather Report. While retaining his introspective flavor that made his saxophone feel lyrical, Shorter took on more of a ‘listening’ role in his songs, often adding subtle harmonies and melodies to the song and responding to the improvisations of his bandmates.
Initially, Shorter used Weather Report to explore composing, diving into more abstract, atonal free jazz. However, his avant-garde style clashed with the vision of his bandmates, and, as a result, co-leader Zawinul became the sole musical leader of the group by the mid ‘70s. Despite this, Shorter understood and maintained positive relations with the group, remaining as an instrumentalist, wonderfully showcasing his ability to play with an absurd amount of styles, including funk, Latin jazz, and futurism, influenced by the often-rotating international band members. In 1986, Zawinul and Shorter realized that Weather Report had “run its course” and, after nearly fifteen years of collaborating together on fourteen studio albums and four live albums, they peacefully broke up.
During Shorter’s time playing with various groups, he managed to work independently and recorded many of his own albums, often exclusively performing his own compositions. His solo and side project work flourished in the late 1980s as he left Weather Report. Shorter worked in a variety of styles and genres and managed to maintain close relationships with members of his past, including Herbie Hancock, who collaborated with Shorter on many projects over 40 years, including Shorter’s acclaimed 1974 album Native Dancer (which also features Brazilian composer and vocalist Milton Nascimento), a tribute album to Miles Davis following his death, and an album collaboration in 1997 titled 1+1, the last of which winning a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for the song “Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Shorter recorded 25 albums as leader or co-leader between 1959 and 2016, not including his collaborative albums with Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (22 albums) and Weather Report (8 albums). Two of his independent albums were recorded under the name of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, formed in 2001 with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, featuring Shorter’s new compositions and ones from throughout his entire career. He also continued to record as a sideman for many important works, collaborating with the likes of trumpeter Donald Byrd, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, and Tony Williams.
Throughout his career, Shorter was nominated for 23 Grammys and won 12 of them. While he was first nominated in 1972 for Best Jazz Fusion Performance for Weather Report’s album I Sing The Body Electric, the first he won was in 1979, in the same category, for Weather Report’s album 8:30. The most recent Grammy awarded to Shorter was in 2023 for Best Improvised Jazz Solo for song “Endangered Species.” He has earned countless other honors, including three Lifetime Achievement Awards: his first as the Lifetime achievement Miles Davis Award from the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 1993, another from the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in 2013, and one as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in 2014. Despite receiving his third lifetime achievement award in 2014, over twenty years after his first, Shorter did not quit performing.
The Music of Wayne Shorter (2019) album cover.
At 81 years old, he joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, the brilliant trumpeter who doubled as the orchestra’s artistic director, for three amazing nights in 2015. The result of their collaboration with Marsalis’ jazz cabinet is The Music of Wayne Shorter, an album honoring his craft and career. The album includes his most famous, prominent, and influential tracks from his 60-year career, including “Yes or No,” from his fifth album Juju (1965), “Diana,” from his fourth album Native Dancer (1976), and “The Three Marias,” from his sixteenth album Atlantis (1985). Shorter masterfully combines with Marsalis who, in appreciation and respect of his fellow performer, wonderfully matches his strength in his own playing. The album is a reflection of Shorter’s lifetime and musical career, with the final track illustrating the very beginning of his career: one of his first compositional contributions was to the track “Mama G,” which Shorter helped write and perform for Wynton Kelly’s record Kelly Great in 1959.
Sadly, Shorter passed away in early March of 2023, surrounded by his family and loved ones. With his career spanning more than half a century, his legacy will endlessly live on through his unquestionably influential and powerful music. To engage with his discography is to connect emotionally both with it and with him. Shorter is remembered as the best there ever was, a fearless pioneer of jazz. In the words of Wynton Marsalis: “He’s at the highest level of our music—you can’t get any higher than him.”
edited by Kaleigh Perez.
photo retrieved from Popperfoto via Getty Images.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.