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Remembering Wayne Shorter (1933-2023)
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Wayne Shorter (Newark, August 25, 1933—Los Angeles, March 2, 2023), touched the clarinet, moving to the tenor saxophone towards the end of his adolescence. He studied music at the University of New York in the mid -1950s before serving for two years in the American army. In his student days he had played with several bands, including what Horace Silver directed, and when he was discharged from the army he met John Coltrane, and together they developed many theoretical approaches about music.
In 1959, he entered the “Jazz Messengers” of drummer Art Blakey, remaining with that jazz school until 1963. With Blaokey he recorded more than twenty albums, winning a deserved prestige. 1959 was also the year in which he recorded his first album in his name, the splendid «Blues à la carte» (Affinity, 1959).
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An essential stage of his artistic career was when in 1964 he entered the quintet of Miles Davis, in which he was until 1970. There he coincided with very high level musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Shorter’s contributions were very important for Davis’s quintet, which experienced an expansion in the very innovative jazz parameters, comparable to the changes that occurred by bebop in the forties.
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Shorter’s influence to his teacher paid off in 1968 with the publication of “Miles in the Sky” and «Filles de Kilimanjaro», which incorporated elements to their band as common in rock as the keyboard, guitar and electric bass. The following year, Shorter would participate in the album considered foundational of electric jazz, also, of course, led by Miles Davis, the extraordinary “In a Silent Way” (Columbia, 1969).
Fruit of that extraordinary collaboration with Miles, the select “Blue Note” seal opened the doors and began a musical relationship between the two extraordinarily fruitful for jazz. Shorter’s debut on that seal was in 1964, and could not be more extraordinary. The saxophonist, debuted with an entire, absolute masterpiece of the jazz of all time. “Speak non -evil” was the fruit of an achieved originality, of a masterful creative capacity, and the album soon became part of the best history of this music.
This album was followed by several more between 1965 and 1970 of quality couples. In 1970 Wayne Shorter, he would cover another very important stage in his professional career, when he formed with the keyboardist Joe Zawinul (with which he coincided in his stage with thousands) the Weather Report group. This group would be responsible for forming a new jazz-rock sound, attracting a large audience. The consequence of all this is the sale in 1978 of more than one million copies of his album “Heavy Weather”, which won five Grammy Awards nominations. The years with Zawinul extended further the scope of Shorter, highlighting their appreciation of the freest forms and giving free rein to his delight by musical exoticism.
Although the group “Weather Report” laid the foundations for many jazz fusion bands that followed, mainly because of the passage of Jaco Pastorius for it, its greatest virtue was the group’s ability to absorb the individual quality of its components for the benefit of the collective.
Shorter, was an important innovative who exerted great influence on Hard Bop musicians and fusion jazz and today still active and with the creative capacity intact, remains one of the most imaginative musicians within jazz, constantly looking for new horizons but, thanks to their extensive musical knowledge, preserving identifiable ties with the past. In this sense, the appearance in this third millennium of several and magnificent works confirms that the creative source of this extraordinary musician is not yet exhausted.
Wayne Shorter Quartet | JazzBaltica 2002 Salzau | NDR Bigband.
Mitschnitt von der JazzBaltica, 7. Juli 2002 in Salzau WAYNE SHORTER QUARTET
0:00 Children of the Night 25:18 Angola 38:29 Prometheus unbound Zugabe: 51:08 Meridianne – a wood sylph Wayne Shorter, comp/ arr / ss/ ts Danilo Pérez, p John Patitucci, b Brian Blade, dr NDR Bigband Line up: Claude Egea, tp Ingolf Burkhardt, tp Claus Stötter, tp Reiner Winterschladen, tp Fiete Felsch, as Peter Bolte, as Tilman Ehrhorn, ts Lutz Büchner, ts Frank Delle, bar Joe Gallardo, tb Dan Gottshall, tb Stefan Lottermann, tb Eberhard Budziat, btb
Discography:
Main article on Wikipedia: Wayne Shorter discography
Introducing Wayne Shorter (aka Blues a la Carte, Vee-Jay, 1959)
Second Genesis (Vee-Jay, rec. 1960, rel. 1974)
Wayning Moments (Vee-Jay, 1962)
Night Dreamer (Blue Note, 1964)
JuJu (Blue Note, 1965)
Speak No Evil (Blue Note, rec. 1964, rel. 1966)
The Soothsayer (Blue Note, rec. 1965, rel. 1979)
Et Cetera (Blue Note, rec. 1965, rel. 1980)
The All Seeing Eye (Blue Note, rec. 1965, rel. 1966)
Adam's Apple (Blue Note, rec. 1966, rel. 1967)
Schizophrenia (Blue Note, rec. 1967, rel. 1969)
Super Nova (Blue Note, 1969)
Moto Grosso Feio (Blue Note, rec. 1970, rel. 1974)
Odyssey of Iska (Blue Note, rec. 1970, rel. 1971)
Native Dancer (Columbia, rec. 1974, rel. 1975) with Milton Nascimento
Atlantis (Columbia, 1985)
Phantom Navigator (Columbia, rec. 1986, rel. 1987)
Joy Ryder (Columbia, 1988)
High Life (Verve, 1995)
1+1 (Verve, 1997) with Herbie Hancock
Footprints Live! (Verve, 2002)
Alegría (Verve, 2003)
Beyond the Sound Barrier (Verve, rec. live 2002–2004, rel. 2005) as Wayne Shorter Quartet
Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter – Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1988 (Image Entertainment, 2007) with Carlos Santana
Without a Net (Blue Note, rec. live 2010, rel. 2013) as Wayne Shorter Quartet
Celebration Volume 1 (Blue Note, 2024)