Wayne Shorter


Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.
Shorter came to wide prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he went on to join Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and from there he co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He has recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader.
Many of Shorter's compositions have become jazz standards, and his output has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise and various commendations. Shorter has won 11 Grammy Awards. He has also received acclaim for his mastery of the soprano saxophone, beginning an extended reign in 1970 as Down Beats annual poll-winner on that instrument, winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' for 18. The New York Times described Shorter in 2008 as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser." In 2017, he was awarded the Polar Music Prize.

Biography

Early life and career

Wayne Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States, and attended Newark Arts High School, from which he graduated in 1952. He loved music, being encouraged by his father to take up the clarinet as a teenager; his older brother Alan played alto saxophone before switching to the trumpet in college. While in high school Wayne also performed with the Nat Phipps Band in Newark, NJ. After graduating from New York University with a degree in music education in 1956, Shorter spent two years in the U.S. Army, during which time he played briefly with Horace Silver. After his discharge, he played with Maynard Ferguson. In his youth Shorter had acquired the nickname "Mr. Gone", which later became an album title for Weather Report.
His early influences include Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins. In 1959, Shorter joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers where he stayed for four years, and eventually became the band's musical director. Together they toured the US, Japan and Europe, recorded several recognized albums and he also composed pieces for the band. During this time Shorter "established himself as one of the most gifted of the young saxophonists" and received international acknowledgment.

With Miles Davis (1964–70)

said of Shorter's tenure in Davis's Second Great Quintet: "The master writer to me, in that group, was Wayne Shorter. He still is a master. Wayne was one of the few people who brought music to Miles that didn't get changed." Davis said, "Wayne is a real composer. He writes scores, writes the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound.... Wayne also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn't work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste."
Ian Carr, musician and Rough Guide author, states that with Davis, Shorter found his own voice as a player and composer. "Blakey's hard-driving, straight-ahead rhythms had brought out the muscularity in Shorter's tenor playing, but the greater freedom of the Davis rhythm-section allowed him to explore new emotional and technical dimensions."
Shorter remained in Davis's band after the breakup of the quintet in 1968, playing on early jazz fusion recordings including In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. His last live dates and studio recordings with Davis were in 1970.
Until 1968, he played tenor saxophone exclusively. The final album on which he played tenor in the regular sequence of Davis albums was Filles de Kilimanjaro. In 1969, he played the soprano saxophone on the Davis album In a Silent Way and on his own Super Nova. When performing live with Davis, and on recordings from summer 1969 to early spring 1970, he played both soprano and tenor saxophones; by the early 1970s, however, he chiefly played soprano.

Solo Blue Note recordings

Simultaneous with his time in the Davis quintet, Shorter recorded several albums for Blue Note Records, featuring almost exclusively his own compositions, with a variety of line-ups, quartets and larger groups, including Blue Note favourites such as Freddie Hubbard. His first Blue Note album was Night Dreamer, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in 1964 with Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones.
The later album The All Seeing Eye was a workout with a larger group, while Adam's Apple of 1966 was back to carefully constructed melodies by Shorter leading a quartet. Then a sextet again in the following year for Schizophrenia with Hancock and Ron Carter plus trombonist Curtis Fuller, alto saxophonist/flautist James Spaulding and strong rhythms by drummer Joe Chambers.
Shorter also recorded occasionally as a sideman with Donald Byrd, Tyner, Grachan Moncur III, Hubbard, Morgan, and bandmates Hancock and Williams.

Weather Report (1971–1986)

Following the release of Odyssey of Iska in 1970, Shorter formed the fusion group Weather Report with Davis veteran keyboardist Joe Zawinul and bassist Miroslav Vitous. The other original members were percussionist Airto Moreira, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. After Vitous' departure in 1973, Shorter and Zawinul co-led the group until the band's break-up in late 1985. A variety of musicians would make up Weather Report over the years helping the band produce many high quality recordings in diverse styles, with funk, bebop, Latin jazz, ethnic music, and futurism being the most prevalent denominators.

Solo and side projects

Shorter also recorded critically acclaimed albums as a bandleader, notably 1974's Native Dancer, which featured Hancock and Brazilian composer and vocalist Milton Nascimento.
In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he toured in the V.S.O.P. quintet. This group was a revival of the 1960s Davis quintet, except that Hubbard filled the trumpet chair. Shorter appeared with the same former Davis bandmates on the Carlos Santana double LP The Swing of Delight, for which he also composed a number of pieces.
From 1977 through 2002, he appeared on 10 Joni Mitchell studio albums, gaining him a wider audience. He played an extended solo on the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja.

Later career

After leaving Weather Report, Shorter continued to record and lead groups in jazz fusion styles, including touring in 1988 with guitarist Carlos Santana, who appeared on This is This!, the last Weather Report disc. There is a concert video recorded at the Lugano Jazz Festival in 1987, with Jim Beard, keyboards, Carl James, bass, Terri Lyne Carrington, drums, and Marilyn Mazur, percussion. In 1989, he contributed to a hit on the rock charts, playing the sax solo on Don Henley's song "The End of the Innocence" and also produced the album Pilar by the Portuguese singer-songwriter Pilar Homem de Melo. He has also maintained an occasional working relationship with Herbie Hancock, including a tribute album recorded shortly after Miles Davis's death with Hancock, Carter, Williams and Wallace Roney. He continued to appear on Mitchell's records in the 1990s and can be heard on the soundtrack of the Harrison Ford film The Fugitive.
In 1995, Shorter released the album High Life, his first solo recording for seven years. It was also his debut as a leader for Verve Records. Shorter composed all the compositions on the album and co-produced it with the bassist Marcus Miller. High Life received the Grammy Award for best Contemporary Jazz Album in 1997.
Shorter worked with Hancock once again in 1997, on the much acclaimed and heralded album 1+1. The song "Aung San Suu Kyi" won both Hancock and Shorter a Grammy Award.
In 2009, he was announced as one of the headline acts at the Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco. His 2013 album Without a Net is his first with Blue Note Records since Odyssey of Iska.

Quartet

In 2000, Shorter formed the first permanent acoustic group under his name, a quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, playing his own compositions, many of them reworkings of tunes going back to the 1960s. Four albums of live recordings have been released: Footprints Live! ; Beyond the Sound Barrier ; Without A Net ; and Emanon, with the latter, in addition to live material, including Shorter’s quartet in a studio session with the 34-piece Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The quartet has received great acclaim from fans and critics, especially for the strength of Shorter's tenor saxophone playing. The biography Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter by journalist Michelle Mercer examines the working life of the musicians as well as Shorter's thoughts and Buddhist beliefs. Beyond the Sound Barrier received the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album.
Shorter's 2003 album Alegría received the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album; it features the quartet with a host of other musicians, including pianist Brad Mehldau, drummer Carrington and former Weather Report percussionist Alex Acuña. Shorter's compositions, some new, some reworked from his Davis period, feature the complex Latin rhythms that he specialised in during his Weather Report days.

Lifetime achievement recognition

On September 17, 2013, Shorter received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
On December 18, 2014, the Recording Academy announced that Shorter was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his "prolific contributions to our culture and history".
In 2016, Shorter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of music composition, the only jazz artist to receive the honor that year.
In 2017, Shorter was announced as the joint winner of the Polar Music Prize. The award committee stated: "Without the musical explorations of Wayne Shorter, modern music would not have drilled so deep."
In 2018, Shorter was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor Award.

''Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity''

In 2015, producer/director Dorsay Alavi began filming a documentary about the life of Wayne Shorter called Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity. The film is set to be released in 2020.

Mega Nova

In 2016, it was announced that Shorter, Carlos Santana, and Herbie Hancock would begin touring under the name Mega Nova. Also included within the supergroup was bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana. Their first show together was on August 24, 2016 at the Hollywood Bowl.

Health

Mr Shorter’s health challenges over the past few years have finally forced him to retire from his nearly 70 year performing career. As his health permits, he continues to compose with a particular focus on completing a new operatic work.

Personal life

Shorter met Teruko Nakagami in 1961. They were later married and had a daughter, Miyako. Some of his compositions are copyrighted as "Miyako Music" and Shorter dedicated the pieces "Miyako" and "Infant Eyes" to his daughter. The couple separated in 1964.
Shorter met Ana Maria Patricio in 1966 and they were married in 1970. In 1985, their daughter Iska died of a grand mal seizure at age 14. Ana Maria and the couple's niece, Dalila, were both killed on July 17, 1996, on TWA Flight 800, while travelling to visit him in Italy. Dalila was the daughter of Ana Maria Shorter's sister and her husband, jazz vocalist Jon Lucien. In 1999, Shorter married Carolina Dos Santos, a close friend of Ana Maria. She practices Nichiren Buddhism and is a longtime member of the Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International.
Composer and producer Rick Shorter was Shorter's cousin.

Discography


  • Introducing Wayne Shorter
  • Second Genesis
  • Wayning Moments
  • Night Dreamer
  • JuJu
  • Speak No Evil
  • The Soothsayer
  • Et Cetera
  • The All Seeing Eye
  • Adam's Apple
  • Schizophrenia
  • Super Nova
  • Odyssey of Iska
  • Moto Grosso Feio
  • Native Dancer with Milton Nascimento
  • Atlantis
  • Phantom Navigator
  • Joy Ryder
  • High Life
  • 1+1 with Herbie Hancock
  • Footprints Live!
  • Alegría
  • Beyond the Sound Barrier
  • Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter – Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1988 with Carlos Santana
  • Without a Net
  • Emanon

Awards