Saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, one of the greatest figures in American Jazz, died Thursday at the age of 89.
Genius saxophonist and jack-of-all-trades, American jazzman Wayne Shorter died Thursday at the age of 89 after having established himself for half a century at the height of the legendary Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock .
Considered one of the greatest jazz composers in the United States, this “visionary” African-American artist born August 25, 1933 in Newark, near New York, died on the other side of the country, in Los Angeles, announced in a press release his agent Alisse Kingsley.
An “irreplaceable human being”
Quoted in this press release, the giant Herbie Hancock, his “closest friend for over six decades”bowed to a “irreplaceable human being, capable of reaching the pinnacle of excellence, as saxophonist, composer, arranger and recently opera composer (‘Iphigenia’)”.
In fact, the influence of Wayne Shorter goes far beyond the register of jazz to touch many musical genres: rock, folk, blues, pop, opera, classical. THE New York Times describes him in his obituary as a musician “innovative”, “intrepid” and “enigmatic”.
Among the first to react, the American trumpeter Wynton Marsalis greeted his 30-year-old senior, who “improved everything he touched and who will remain purveyor of pentatonic perfection, master of melodies declined in blues, hero of vertical and horizontal harmonic effects and giant of the saxophone whatever the register” musical.
The young virtuoso pianist from New Orleans Jon Batiste also paid tribute to Shorter, “truly unique”posting a short video on Twitter where the two men share a moment of musical complicity.
His agent recalled that the “Shorter’s works have been played by the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Detroit, Lyon, Polish radio…”. In February, he won his 13th Grammy Awards, the Oscars of the music industry.
Friend and collaborator of the greats (Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakeyà), he excelled on both soprano and tenor saxophone, notably with his jazz fusion group of the 1970s and 1980s, Weather Report. Eclectic and able to approach many musical registers, Wayne Shorter has accompanied the Brazilian Milton Nascimento, the Malian Salif Keita, the Canadian Joni Mitchell and even the British rockers of the Rolling Stones, the Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana or the New York pop singer Norah Jones.
By the 1960s, Wayne Shorter had managed to impose a third voice in jazz, during a period dominated by legendary saxophonists John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. With his brother Alan Shorter (1932-1988), they played bebop and called each other Mr Weird (“Mister Weird”) and Doc Strange (“Docteur Etrange”), wearing dark glasses in the darkness of jazz clubs.
He was one of the last giants of the saxophone, a jazz instrument he had embraced in the 1950s after an adolescence as a clarinettist. “I knew that people started an instrument at the age of 5, so I knew that I had a lot of catching up to do”noted Shorter with a hint of mischief, in 2018 with the washington postbefore receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Cultural Center in Washington.