The enigmatic jazz titan passed away at 89 years in March 2023
The cover of Shorter’s youthful and sci-fi infused comic book, included with the purchase of his quartet’s final album Emanon
Wayne Shorter always talked in terms that were bigger than life. Everything was a lesson for Shorter, and he made everything a lesson for those around him. A practicing Buddhist, he described the tragic death of his late wife Ana Maria Patricio in a plane crash as an opportunity to learn to be happier. Shorter spoke of the same lesson after the passing of his daughter. Despite these and many other losses, Shorter’s outlook on life was of stark optimism. Friends and colleagues describe him as an uplifting soul, whose indirect yet poetically clear “Wayne-isms” were avenues of introspection. “You can’t rehearse the unknown,” Shorter famously replied after being simply asked what they were going to rehearse. Michelle Mercer—author of Shorter’s biography Footprints—asserts that Wayne chose to speak in this unconventional way because it’s truest to his imagination, to his mind, and to the Buddhist tradition. Whether it was in his virtuosic playing or his philosophical ruminations, his whole spirit bent towards this self-identifying truth. The forward-thinking musician passed away at the age of 89 in the city of angels.
Shorter was born in the industrial district of Newark, New Jersey in 1933. Growing up, his father worked as a welder while his mother was a seamstress. Wayne discovered his passion for the arts early on: both Wayne and his older brother Alan would consume comic books, science fiction stories, and music at extreme rates. Having picked up the clarinet at the age of 16, he encountered many teachers at the Newark Arts High School who helped to cultivate a passion for the performing arts. A year after the clarinet, he picked up the tenor saxophone in reaction to the bebop greats who were flourishing. Wasting no time, both Wayne and Alan formed a bebop combo with Wayne on tenor saxophone and Alan on trumpet. Respectively nicknamed “Doc Strange” and “Mr. Weird,” they quickly made a name for themselves–dressing in colorful, flamboyant outfits at their gigs. At the end of his high school career, bebop behemoth Sonny Sitt famously asked Wayne to join him on tour, to which Shorter declined instead pursuing studying composition at NYU. Even at a young age, Shorter’s spirit was inclined to the academic.
During his time at NYU, Wayne entrenched himself in bebop, turning heads in the New York scene. Following his graduation, Shorter joined the army, where he made the weekend 60-mile trip to NYC to gig, still managing to practice relentlessly. After two years in the army, Shorter was discharged and promptly recruited by both trumpet behemoth Maynard Ferguson (whose later rendition of Weather Report’s Birdland is just about as euphorically funky jazz can get) and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Making the unsurprising call, Shorter joined the Jazz Messengers in 1959, where he gained international acclaim through his virtuosic playing and compositional style. Children of the Night, one of Shorter’s earlier compositions with the Messengers, stands out with its prominent tenor-heavy melody that playfully dances around bop-infused chords.
After four years with the Messengers, Shorter was poached again. Now joining the ranks of jazz nobility, Shorter was welcomed to Miles Davis’s Quintet, putting a stop in the revolving tenor saxophone seat. With the Second Great Quintet complete, the group’s sound and compositions, as Miles put it, was “time, no changes.” Though this style of free jazz fell under bop, it leaned on the more cosmic and avant-garde side of jazz. Shorter’s first contribution to the Quintet was with the early 1965 E.S.P (Extra Sensory Perception), whose title track was one of his compositions. A frenetic track, the Quintet soars over Shorter’s disjointed chords, exploding and receding appropriately to let the soloists shine. Critical reception was high, with cultural critic Stanley Crouch’s infamous lens praising the album. Shorter later became the band’s primary composer.
Shorter stayed with the Quintet from 1964-1970 while he recorded his compositions for the Blue Note Records as well. In 1969 Shorter notably recorded In a Silent Way with Davis and Super Nova, his album, on the soprano saxophone. Shorter’s playing is nothing short of self-prescribed elusiveness, but with the soprano saxophone, his tenor’s dark timbre transforms into a brighter and more euphoric tone. This transformation of sound fit In a Silent Way’s electronic sonic soundscape beautifully. Grand pianos were replaced by electric pianos, and bright guitars entered the composition, creating a forward-thinking melding of rock and jazz. Its free-flowing sound and minimalist texture gave clear roots for the beginning of post-rock (which Talk Talk pocketed and revisited almost 18 years later). Music critic Lester Bangs wrote as much in his rave review for the album as well: “It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.” Shorter’s intro solo on the title track is content with floating between space and time, letting the piano and guitar outline the composition’s formless structure.
Following 1970, Shorter helped form the jazz fusion band Weather Report as a response to the public’s growing desire for rock-influenced music. Helmed by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Shorter initially, the band began as a free-improvising jazz group that freely incorporated elements of funk and R&B. Their first album Weather Report (1971) took what made In a Silent Way so enigmatic and ran with it. Redefining the boundary between rock and jazz, Weather Report pushed works at this intersection forward. In Shorter’s 15 years with the band, he acted as the primary instrumental voice and helped to compose many of the group’s genre bending tracks, from eclectic funk to smooth Latin jazz.
Shorter also continued to expand his own solo career. His worldly album Native Dancer (1975) liberally featured Herbie Hancock (the two of whom met playing in Davis’ Quintet) and blended Brazilian rhythms with jazz and funk’s freewheeling intensity. Shorter and Hancock’s friendship continued to flourish later in their careers with the creation of their Grammy winning 1+1 album in 1997. Both Wayne and Hancock were fervent Nichiren Buddhists which arguably helped enable them to channel their own spirituality through the music they were playing. The religion calls for the repeated chanting of the phrase Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, a commitment to nurturing Buddha inside of yourself.
Spiritually fitting, Shorter’s final musical group he piloted was one that prioritized exploring humanity over accessibility. The Wayne Shorter Quartet formed in 2000 with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Though the group made countless recordings (primarily of new and old Shorter compositions), one stands out in particular. Emanon is a monster project, giving the undertaker a small glimpse into Shorter’s “artistic multiverse.” A triple album, accompanied by an 84-paged graphic novel (developed by the futuristic loving Shorter), it truly puts Shorter’s spry spirit on full display. At the age of 85, nothing could stifle his enchanting musical outlook.
In his last years of life, Shorter returned to an opera he began designing at the age of 19. “Buddhism taught me that anything we promise to do, we must follow through with,” he declared when asked why it was that project he decided to pursue. The jazz opera, titled, Ipheigenia, tells the epic story of Greek figure who’s sacrificed to help mobilize an army for war. Working closely with Esperanza Spalding, a vocalist he played with in Weather Report, the two of them helmed the creation of this mammoth project. Fielding health crises after health crises, it was unclear whether Shorter would live to see the end of this project. Spalding worked full-time with Shorter to make the opera happen, and after eight years in the making it was complete. Not a culmination of Shorter’s work, but rather a continuation of his pursuit of impenetrable knowledge, the opera was at war with itself in its first performances. Both Shorter and Spalding described the work as being a “work in progress,” but perhaps it is fitting for Shorter’s immediate legacy to be that of a still-evolving performance. His pursuit of knowledge was so insatiable that even the turning of time couldn’t stop it.