Wayne Shorter Biography

Wayne Shorter (born August 25, 1933) is an American jazz composer and saxophonist.

Commonly regarded as one of the more important American jazz sax players and composers since the 1960s, Shorter has recorded dozens of albums as a leader, and appeared on dozens more with others. Many of his compositions have become standards.

Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey, and attended Newark Arts High School. He was encouraged by his father to take up the saxophone as a teenager (his brother Alan became a trumpeter). After graduating from New York University in 1956 Shorter spent two years in the US Army, during which time he played briefly with Horace Silver. After his discharge from the army he played with Maynard Ferguson.

In 1959 Shorter joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He stayed with Blakey for five years, and eventually became musical director for the group.

In 1964, Miles Davis persuaded Shorter to leave Blakey and join the Miles Davis Quintet alongside Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Davis had been searching for a saxophonist to replace John Coltrane for some time, and the new quintet is considered by many to have been Davis's strongest working group. Shorter composed extensively for Davis ("Prince of Darkness", "ESP", "Footprints", "Sanctuary", and many others; on some albums he provided half of the compositions).

Herbie Hancock had this to say of Shorter's tenure in the group: "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, write the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound. He 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."

Simultaneous with his time in the Miles Davis quintet, Shorter recorded several albums for Blue Note Records, featuring almost exclusively his own compositions. "JuJu" and "Speak No Evil" are two of the most well known recordings from this era. They are notable for their use of:

In 1970, along with keyboardist Joe Zawinul (also a veteran of the Miles Davis group), Shorter formed Weather Report. Other original members were bassist Miroslav Vitous, percussionist Airto Moreira, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. Shorter and Zawinul co-led the group until late 1985 with a variety of other musicians (most notably the revolutionary bassist Jaco Pastorius), and separately wrote most of Weather Report's material.

After leaving Weather Report, Shorter continued to record and lead groups in jazz fusion styles. He has also maintained an occasional working relationship with Herbie Hancock, including a tribute album recorded shortly after Davis's death with Hancock, Carter, Williams and Wallace Roney. He continued to appear on Joni Mitchell's records in the 1990s.

In 1995 Shorter released the album High Life, his first solo recording for seven years. It was also Shorter's 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's wife Ana Maria and their niece Dalila were both killed on TWA Flight 800 in 1996, and he married Carolina Dos Santos, a close friend of Ana Maria, in 1999.

Shorter would work 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.

Shorter formed his current band in 2000, the first permanent acoustic group under his leadership. The quartet is composed of Shorter, pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Two albums of live recordings featuring this quartet have been released (Footprints Live (2001) and Beyond the Sound Barrier (2005)). The quartet has received great acclaim from fans and critics, and the musicians have come to consider themselves family on and off stage. Shorter's 2003 album Alegria 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 Terri Lyne Carrington and former Weather Report percussionist Alex Acuña. Beyond the Sound Barrier received the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album.

Shorter is a Nichiren Buddhist.