World music is in mourning. Saxophonist, composer and pioneer of modern jazz sounds Wayne Shorter, died on Thursday March 2 in a hospital in Los Angeles at 89, as his publicist Alisse Kingsley reported to The New York Times.
Wayne (Newmar, August 25, 1933) was throughout his career one of the most admired composers in the jazz world thanks to his refined and particular style with the tenor saxophone, an instrument to which he devoted more than five decades.
Although this musician from New Jersey started playing the clarinet at the age of 16, he quickly realized that the saxophone was his thing, his true and absolute passion. Shorter studied saxophone at New York University until his discharge from the army in 1956 and went on to play with the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, where he met Joe Zawinul, with whom he founded the Wealter Report.
But only a year after forming this group, Wayne joined Art Blakely’s Jazz Messengers, with whom he was between 1959 and 1963. During this period, the jazz artist made his studio debut by recording several albums with the label Vee Jay and finally, at the end of 1964, Miles Davis himself convinced him to join his quintet.
Over the next six years, Wayne Shorter was the Miles band’s most prolific songwriter, providing themes for such iconic songs as ESP, Pnocchio, Nefertiti, Sanctuary, Footprints, Autumn there Prince of Darkness. But he wasn’t just focused on his work with Miles. At the same time that he was creating all these songs, with the Blue Note label, he was also shaping a solo career that leapt into hard bop and jazz fused with rock music.
In November 1970, the musician formed the group Weather Report with Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous and produced at the same time, with Brazilian guitarist Milton Nascimento, the album Aboriginal dancer and toured with some of Miles Davis’ ex-collaborators, whom he joined on thethe VSOP group See you later, finally shelving Weather Report in 1985.
Between 1986 and 1988, Shorter recorded three albums for Columbia, toured with guitarist Carlos Santana, then disappeared from the musical map to concentrate on his personal life in a rather fleeting retirement. Jazz was his whole life and the musician returned to his old ways in 1992 to release a tribute album to Miles Davis and only two years later, in 1994, he presented high life with Verve Records, in 1997 he joined the iconic Rolling Stones as a guest artist on one of his albums and in 2001 he recorded with Marcus Miller what would be one of his last works.
Winner of ten Grammy Awards
Over the five decades of his musical career, the jazz master won ten Grammy Awards who recognized his works as a musician and as an instrumentalist. Besides, in 2007 he won the Doniostako Jazzlandia award at the San Sebastian Jazz Festival and in 2010 he received an honorary doctorate from New York University, a degree he had already obtained in 1998 from Berklee College of Music, one of the most renowned institutions on the world music scene.