Hearing Wayne Shorter, passing through Paris in 2016, playing with Norah Jones allowed us to measure the virtuosity but also the simplicity of the American saxophonist, who died on March 1 at the age of 89, in Los Angeles. Contenting himself that day to be a musician among others, the jazz giant nevertheless received the desperate gratitude of the singer whom he accompanied with his soprano saxophone on Peace, by Horace Silver. After sounding her languid vibrato on this hymn of peace and brotherhood, Norah Jones bowed respectfully before her elder.
A jazz smuggler before becoming a legend, Wayne Shorter rubbed shoulders with the greatest. The pianist and composer Horace Silver (1928-2014), precisely, whom he joined to play bebop after the war was the first of them. Wayne and his brother, trumpet player Al Shorter, brilliant and bulimic musicians, performed whenever they had a commitment, even during their military service in the 1950s.
Because he can play anything, invent anything, Wayne Shorter receives the nickname “Mr Weird”, (“Mister Weird”), which he paints on the case of his instrument. Always creating surprise, pushing the blue note into unknown sounds and territories, the tenor and soprano saxophonist was hired in 1959 by drummer Art Blakey with the Jazz Messengers. He released his first records, solo or with the band of which he became the musical director, of which Sincerely Dianaa great success in 1960.
Miles Davis on trumpet, Herbie Hancock on piano…
In 1964, Wayne Shorter joined Miles Davis. It was John Coltrane who recommended him to the star trumpeter to join his quintet. The formation, with Herbie Hancock on the piano, Ron Carter on the bass, Tony Williams on the drums reaches summits. Among their records that have become monuments, Night Dreamer (1964), The Sorcerer (1967) et Nefertiti (1968).
The saxophonist loves adventure: in 1971 he founded a new group, Weather Report with a composer of Austrian and Gypsy origin, Joe Zawinul, and the bassist of Czech origin Miroslav Vitous, leaving the orthodoxy of jazz to open to all music. The Scrapbook Weather Report (1971) familiar with rock and pop and experimented with the sound of synthesizers, participating in the birth of the World Music.
Wayne Shorter will never stop playing with others, for others: the Brazilian Milton Nascimento, the empress of Canadian folk Joni Mitchell, the Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana, or more recently the princess of vocal jazz Norah Jones (born in 1979) or the vocalist and double bass player Esperanza Spalding (born in 1984).
The man has known tragedies. He has always recovered through music. Very affected by the death of his daughter Iska in 1983, then of his wife Ana Maria and their niece in a plane crash in 1996, he then recorded at the instigation of his friend Herbie Hancock an album of “therapeutic” duets , 1+1released in 1997. Wayne Shorter played until the end, creating his own quartet in the year 2000 and signing at 80 a new contract with the Blue Note label, which will give the triple album Emanon in 2018. We hear him there again, among the musicians, with all the precision, the brilliance and the lyricism of his style.