Status: 03/02/2023 7:20 p.m
He has played with the likes of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter has died. The American jazz musician and composer was 89 years old.
American saxophonist Wayne Shorter is dead. The jazz musician and composer died in Los Angeles at the age of 89, his agent Alisse Kingsley confirmed to the AFP news agency. A cause of death was not known.
Born in 1933 in the US state of New Jersey, the musician had made a name for himself on the saxophone in addition to composing pieces such as “Lester Left Town”, “Nefertiti”, “ESP” and “Footprints” and had received numerous awards for his work. Even as a teenager in his high school band, Shorter was considered “jazz’s boy prodigy”.
Shorter played with Miles Davis
Shorter was considered one of the most influential musicians in jazz history. He was a member and musical director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, a seminal band of the hard bop era in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During his long career he has also played with the likes of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, as well as in the famous jazz fusion formation Weather Report (“Birdland”).
Shorter wrote some of jazz’s best-known compositions. His often heavy tones changed jazz in the 1960s and shaped the jazz-rock fusion genre. He “shaped the color and contours of modern jazz as one of its most admired composers,” wrote the New York Times.