“How are we going to rehearse tomorrow? How are we going to face the unknown without a formula, without a script?” Wayne Shorter had wondered in an interview with this newspaper in 2014. It wasn’t just about the music. He talked about how to live. At 81, he was exploring astrophysics and predicted that if science and art went hand in hand, we would witness a “tsunami of ideas” that would change the way we think. And Wayne Shorter, tenor and soprano saxophone, composer and one of the compasses of the world jazz For the last half century he has always lived looking ahead.. He died Thursday in Los Angeles at the age of 89, leaving behind one of the most impressive legacies of modern jazz.
Great composer, undisputed improviser, member of one of the most influential bands of all time, A pioneer of jazz rock and a reference to several generations of musicians, Wayne Shorter was an innovator. Born in Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up with his trumpeter brother Alan, Wayne rose to prominence as a saxophonist and composer on Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early 60s. From there, Miles Davis took him to complete a capital quintet of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams that marked the future of jazz between 1964 and 1969. He was the brightest sound architect and composer in the Miles Davis Quintet. Shorter has composed some of the most enduring jazz works of the last 50 years., especially those recorded by the Blue Note label in the 60s – ‘Evil talk’, ‘The all seeing eye’ -. Many of Shorter’s intriguing, mysterious compositions entered the jazz repertoire and became today’s standards, such as “Footprints”, “Juju” or “Adam’s apple”. He was the last person to achieve such a thing.
Shorter reached an even wider audience with his next big project. In 1971, he and Austrian keyboardist Josef Zawinul, with whom he worked with Miles Davis, started Weather Report, which brought the fusion of jazz with rock and other music to the big stadiums. The group has toured all over the world for 15 years. – Shorter was inspired to write the meaningful ‘Plaza Real’ during his visit to Barcelona- and recorded albums that even appeared on the charts. Following the disbandment of Weather Report, Shorter continued his solo career with albums in which he explored electronic sounds but did not receive critical acclaim or resonance from his previous projects.
Interested in what goes on beyond jazz, he collaborated with Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell and Milton Nascimento, with whom he recorded ‘Native dancer’ in 1974. It was a bold approach to Brazilian music that he discovered through his second wife, born in Portugal and raised in Angola. Shorter’s life went through tragic changes. In 1985, his 14-year-old daughter died. Shorter took refuge in Buddhism, which henceforth determined the way he saw the world. And in 1996, his wife and nephew died in a plane crash.
Shortly after, he recorded a duet album with Herbie Hancock called ‘1+1’, which was a turning point and a return to acoustic music. His artistic renaissance was one of jazz’s most notorious: in 2000, near his 70th birthday, he formed a quartet with pianist Danilo Pérez, drummer Brian Blade and double bassist John Pattitucci that once again marked the jazz of its time. and became the longest-lived band of their career. On the record, but particularly lively, they were exciting: It suggested shorter, minimal ideas, almost haiku, and the band took them into unknown territory. Fascinated by science fiction and popular culture since childhood – nicknamed Mr. Garip (“Mr. Strange”), which he proudly wore – at the end of his career, he embarked on ambitious projects. In 2018, he released “Emanon”, a trio album featuring the orchestra and accompanied by a cartoon he drew. And more: he wrote an opera with singer and double bassist Esperanza Spalding called “Iphigenia”, which will premiere in 2021. His curiosity knew no bounds. “I think we were born with an authority that was taken from us as soon as we were born,” he said in 2014, days before he was due to have an unforgettable concert at the Auditori in Barcelona. “But like turtles that reach the sea as soon as they are born, some of us manage to plunge ourselves into the ocean of discovery, namely life.”