the saxophonist Wayne Shorterconsidered one of the greatest American jazz composers of all time, has passed away at the age of 89, leaving behind a fruitful and innovative career full of successes.
His agent Alisse Kingsley confirmed to AFP his death in a Los Angeles hospital, but did not specify the causes.
The enigmatic composer, one of the greatest jazz legends of all time, played with musicians such as Miles Davis and was the leader of prestigious bands such as Weather report.
He was one of the last jazz greats to cut his teeth at the genre’s heyday in the 1950s, when the sound took over dance halls and gained ground in intellectual circles.
Born on August 25, 1933 in Newark, New Jersey, Shorter began playing the clarinet as a teenager. But soon after he traded it for the saxophone.
With his brother they played bebop, calling themselves “Mr Weird” and “Doc Strange” for their antics, such as wearing dark sunglasses in dimly lit clubs.
“We wore wrinkled clothes, because we thought bebop was best played in wrinkled clothes,” Shorter told The Atlantic in 2004.
“You had to be ragged to be authentic.”
He attended New York University, graduating with a degree in music education in 1956, and spent two years in the military, where he played with jazz pianist Horace Silver.
“People start playing instruments at the age of five, so I thought I had to get up to speed quickly,” he told The Washington Post before receiving the prestigious Kennedy Center Award in 2018, which celebrates the best of American arts.
“Authentic Composer”
on 19 of Art Blakey —was their musical director 64, Shorter left the Jazz Messengers with which he achieved international fame—to join trumpeter Davis.
Davis’ Second Great Quintet included keyboardist Herbie Hancockwho became one of his best friends and a regular collaborator.
Davis often described the group’s ethic: “time, no change”, that is, allowing free jazz without completely throwing away boundaries.
The collaboration resulted in some of the best-known jazz numbers of the 20th century, including “ESP,” “Nefertiti,” and “Footprints.”
“Wayne is a true composer” who worked by musical rules, Davis said in his biography. But “if they didn’t work, he would break them, albeit with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules and bend them to your own satisfaction and taste,” he said.
interpret eternity
In 1970, Shorter co-founded Weather Reportt, with which he delved into jazz fusion, combining jazz harmonies and improvisation with developing forms of rock, funk and R&B. And even with electronic elements.
Over the course of 16 years, the band embraced a new way of playing by abandoning the standard solo format for playing with accompaniment so that all band members improvised simultaneously.
Shorter was already famous in his own right, but his collaborations with artists like joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and Carlos Santana they spread their talent to a wider audience.
Her collaboration with Mitchell was especially fruitful: Shorter worked on all the albums the singer released between 1977 and 2002.
“One of the best experiences I’ve ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter“said Hancock. “It was enough to hear them speak to keep my mouth open.” “They understood each other perfectly.”
Mitchell was also full of praise for Shorter. His way of working was “the difference between genius and talent,” he said.
A lover of comics and a practicing Buddhist, Shorter released “Emanon” in 2018, a triple disc within a 74-page fantasy graphic novel he co-wrote that details the adventures of a “rogue philosopher” who fights evil with the truth.
“I seek to express eternity in composition,” he had said in his 2007 biography.
The recipient of the most awards throughout his career and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he continued to tour well into his later years, though chronic health problems slowed him down.
His opera with the bassist Hope Spaldingwhich premiered in 2021, passed without pain or glory.
I believe that music opens portals and doors to unknown sectors that take courage to jump into.”
