“Legend of Jazz”, “jazz icon”, “jazz giant” ? The great Anglo-Saxon press competes in finds to try to say something quite simple but very difficult to say without clichés: one of the greatest composer-actors (musician) of the last seventy years, Mr. Wayne Shorter, born in Newark (New Jersey) on August 25, 1933, died on March 2 in hospital in Los Angeles. He was 89 years old and, in a scientifically verifiable way, 89 ways of inventing “jazz” at any time.
There were three highlights in his pursuit of intimate rigor: the Jazz Messengers by drummer Art Blakey (he later became musical director); sharing the most amazing quintet of Miles Davis, the second (1964-1968), of which he is – according to Miles – the true designer; the group Weather Report, founded with Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous in 1970. The musician thus knew Dthe Grammy Awards as if it were raining, discs of gold, platinum, cobalt, lithium with the shovel, a fervor more philosopher than music lover among his supporters. He was also the least flashy, the sweetest, the strangest personality. The angel of the bizarre at your fingertips.
The general public will have missed it a little, the French super-festivals have not been able to do it. The musicians themselves have never been mistaken. He appears in a dozen albums by the surprising Joni Mitchell, who held him to be a painter, a colorist. Her relationship with musicians (Terri Lyne Carrington, Joni Mitchell, Esperanza Spalding) is feminine. jazz? Rock? Not rock? Merger? His double agreement with Carlos Santana, or the little mappable Steely Dan, do not facilitate understanding. There is indeed a Wayne Shorter riddle, and that riddle might just be his obvious.
In Newark, from the post-war years, Wayne and his brother Al Shorter (1932-1987, cornet, trumpet, free, long settled in Paris) plunged into the bebop revolution (Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk). The father, Joseph, is a welder for the Singer company, the mother sews. The brothers, music to the body, are also passionate about drawing, science fiction, radio soap operas and cinematographic mornings at the Adams theater.
In 1945, Wayne won a competition for the first public high school open to the visual arts and performances. The teachers push him towards music theory and composition. With his brother – he plays the tenor, it was later that he became this stylist for the soprano – they joined the local bebop group (the coming insurrection, therefore), horned by a singer who did not have cold-eyed, Jackie Bland.
You have 57.58% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.