was the era of peak fusion (jazz rock) and in the incredibly colorful, electrifying (and electric) music of the band, which foreshadowed world music, the lines of the saxophone of Wayne Shorter, the saxophonist who was “on the conscience” of the band – together with the Austrian, keyboardist Josef (Joe) Zawinul and Czech emigrant Miroslav Vitous.
At sixteen, he started playing the clarinet, and soon switched to the tenor saxophone. After graduating from New York University in music, he served in the army for two years. He turned professional in 1959 as a player in Maynard Ferguson’s Orchestra, where his future colleague Joe Zawinul also worked on the keyboard for a while. He became a close friend of the revolutionary John Coltrane, who was one of the greatest musical innovators ever. They often “just” talked about music, proving that discourse can be just as beneficial to music as playing. At the end of 1959, he became a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and together with trumpeter Lee Morgan created a unique sound.
Wayne Shorter has played with the greatest originals all his life and was one of them himself. Not anymore. This year we have to prepare for several losses, because many legends are simply “that” age. Shorter left us a year before ninety. “At 4:00 a.m. today, Wayne Shorter calmly continued his enormous journey into the unknown. He was surrounded by a loving family. In his words, ‘It’s time to go for a new body and come back to continue the mission,'” his family wrote on Shorter’s Facebook profile.
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