Wayne Shorter: 25/08/1933 – 02/03/2023

It is no exaggeration to say that Wayne Shorter, who died peacefully on 2 March 2023 surrounded by his family, changed the sound of jazz. Although one of the music’s great saxophonists, he was also one of its greatest composers – some would argue he was the greatest when measuring the extent of his influence in jazz (that even bled into rock music). Although primarily remembered for his association with Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis, Weather Report, and his own quartet (2001-2015), Shorter memorably collaborated with Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, and Carlos Santana, explored a jazz-Brazilian fusion with Milton Nascimento, electro-symphonic sounds and late in his career collaborated with Esperanza Spalding in writing the full-length opera Iphigenia. Enigmatic and elliptic in conversation, something that was echoed in his saxophone solos and compositions, Shorter was famous for thinking 'outside the box', or, as the title of one of his albums – he was a dedicated fan of science fiction – 'beyond the sound barrier'.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on 25 August 1933, he was an academically bright and diligent student. A fan of Marvel comics, he assiduously collected them throughout his life, becoming fascinated with science fiction. He even used his school exercise books to write and illustrate, in Marvel comics style, his own science fiction stories, earning the nickname 'Mr. Gone' (which later became an album title by Weather Report). His teenage comic strip stories were kept by Shorter and were the inspiration behind the three-CD set Emanon in 2018, a programmatic suite based on a sci-fi story of Shorter’s own invention.

Encouraged by his parents to learn the clarinet, he threw himself into music studies, subsequently graduating from New York University in 1952 with a degree in music education. From 1956 he spent two years in the Army, furthering his music education, and on his return to civilian life joined the Maynard Ferguson Big Band. The following year he joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and soon became its musical director, instrumental in expanding the front-line to include a trombone alongside his tenor sax and Lee Morgan’s trumpet. Shorter contributed extensively to Blakey’s repertoire, one of his first compositions was ‘Children of the Night,’ which appeared on his first album with Blakey, Mosaic. A memorable composition in its own right, it was typical of the degree of sophistication Shorter brought to the hard bop idiom through his compositional skill. The song would later resurface in orchestral form on Shorter’s 1996 album High Life.

Wayne Shorter live with Danilo Pérez - photo by Tim Dickeson

In 1964, he joined the Miles Davis quintet with Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. This ensemble would later earn the sobriquet, 'The Second Great Quintet', the first being the 1950s ensemble with John Coltrane. One of the first tunes Shorter contributed was ‘E.S.P.’ on the album E.S.P. Based on intervals of descending fourths, Davis initially claimed co-composer credit. But his faltering execution of the tune suggested Shorter was actually the composer, something that was subsequently confirmed when Davis reverted the compositional rights to him.

It was with Davis that Shorter evolved a fresh approach to composition. Very few of his compositions followed the conventionally constructed standards and were often through composed (instead of 32 bar AABA compositions, they might be all A, for example) thus avoiding a “middle eight”. They avoided turnarounds – a set of chords that announced the end of a chorus – Shorter intent in encouraging free flowing improvisations. His melodies often comprised long, connected, sustained tones, and fewer chords. To sustain interest, the burden of complexity fell to the rhythm section, for example Shorter’s ‘Nefertiti’, a slow, floating melody, sees a very proactive role for Tony Williams. This is the point at which Shorter changed the sound of jazz.

Previously bop and hard bop comprised long lines of interconnected phrases with the rhythm section effectively acting as timekeepers. Now, the horns relinquished complex lines, and the complexity rested with the piano, bass and drums and became characteristic of Weather Report, whom Shorter joined in 1971. Concurrent with Shorter’s time with Davis, he recorded a number of albums under his own name utilising these concepts including Adam’s Apple, Ju-Ju, Speak No Evil and Night Dreamer, highly collectible in their original vinyl format and widely regarded as among the finest examples of the Blue Note ouvre.

After 15 years and 16 albums with Weather Report, Shorter fronted his own groups, including one all-female line-up, with varying success, and was a member of the highly successful V.S.O.P. – the Davis quintet of which he was a member with Freddie Hubbard in Davis’ stead. Since the 1970s he had become increasingly engaged with Nichiren Buddhism, which for a while diverted him from composition, but when he signed with the reconstituted Verve label and released his first solo album for seven years in 1995, High Life, it won a Grammy Award. He received another with his quartet for 2005’s Beyond the Sound Barrier. By the time he began to wind down his actives in his eighties, he had received some of America’s top awards including a Kennedy Center Honors Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Thelonious Monk Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.