Wayne Shorter was a crucial jazz pioneer. His lyrical, complex jazz compositions and remarkable saxophone playing have been heard in American music for more than 50 years. He died at the age of 89.
A musician’s representative said that Shorter died Thursday in Los Angeles. No reason was given for the death.
Shorter started playing the tenor saxophone in 1959. He later became a key member of two of the most important jazz groups: Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet. Shorter worked with a lot of different people over the next 80 years.
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He helped start the fusion band Weather Report in the 1970s, played on about 10 albums with Joni Mitchell, and did more work with Carlos Santana and Steely Dan.
Many of Shorter’s textured and elliptical compositions, like “Speak No Evil,” “Black Nile,” “Footprints,” and “Nefertiti,” became modern jazz standards and expanded the harmonic possibilities of jazz during some of its most rapidly changing periods.
In Davis’s Second Great Quintet, Herbie Hancock once said about Wayne Shorter: “Wayne Shorter was the best writer in that group, in my opinion.
Grammy-winning saxophone player Wayne Shorter dead: Known for his work with Miles Davis https://t.co/KRES9obue4
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 2, 2023
Shorter put out more than 25 albums as the leader of a band. He won 11 Grammys, and in 2015, he won one for a lifetime of work.
