WayneShorter
Polar Talks
The Polar Music Prize week in Stockholm started on June 14 with the Polar Talks conference at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in Stockholm. Wayne Shorter was interviewed by Miriam Aïda, music journalist and jazz musician, about his illustrious career, during which he has with luminaries such as Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock and Cindy Blackman.
Miriam Aïda and Wayne Shorter on stage.
The Ceremony
Wayne Shorter and Sting received the Polar Music Prize on June 15, 2017 during ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Several artists honored the Laureates together with the The Royal Stockholm Philarmonic Orchestra, led by maestro Hans Ek. Artists performing in tribute to Wayne Shorter and Sting, included Jennie Abrahamson, Lennart Åberg, Marius Neset, José Feliciano, Gregory Porter, Josefin Runsteen, Ane Brun, Linnea Olsson, Fredrik Ljungqvist and The Tallest Man On Earth.
Esperanza Spalding read the citation for Wayne Shorter, and performed later in the evening at the banquet.
Esperanza Spalding reading the citation for Wayne Shorter.
Wayne Shorter receiving the Polar Music Prize.
The banquet
At Grand Hôtel where the celebration continued with amazing performances by Swedish and international artists; Nils Landgren, Eva Dahlgren, Gregory Porter, Esperanza Spalding, Petra Marklund and a surprise appearance by Annie Lennox.
At the banquet from left: Jan Gradvall, Esperanza Spalding, Wayne Shorter, HM Queen Silvia & Lennart Wiklund, Chairman of the Polar Music Prize.
“Hey, man, let me get a clarinet.”
Born in Newark, New Jersey on August 25, 1933, Wayne Shorter had his first great jazz epiphany as a teenager:
“I remember seeing Lester Young when I was 15 years old. It was a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic show in Newark and he was late coming to the theater. Me and a couple of other guys were waiting out front of the Adams Theater and when he finally did show up, he had the pork pie hat and everything. So then we were trying to figure out how to get into the theater from the fire escape around the back. We eventually got into the mezzanine and saw that whole show — Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie bands together on stage doing ‘Peanut Vendor,’ Charlie Parker with strings doing ‘Laura’ and stuff like that. And Russell Jacquet…Ilinois Jacquet. He was there doing his thing. That whole scene impressed me so much that I just decided, ‘Hey, man, let me get a clarinet.’ So I got one when I was 16, and that’s when I started music.”
Illinois Jacquet and the pork pie hat, New York 1947 (Source: William P. Gottlieb, Wikimedia Commons)
"Jazz at the Philharmonic," or JATP (1944–1983), was the title of a series of jazz concerts, tours and recordings produced by Norman Granz.
The Newark Flash
Switching to tenor saxophone, Shorter formed a teenage band in Newark called The Jazz Informers. While still in high school, Shorter participated in several cutting contests on Newark’s jazz scene, including one memorable encounter with sax great Sonny Stitt. He attended college at New York University from 1952, while also soaking up the Manhattan jazz scene by frequenting popular nightspots like Birdland and Cafe Bohemia. Wayne worked his way through college by playing with the Nat Phipps orchestra. Upon graduating in 1956, he worked briefly with Johnny Eaton and his Princetonians, earning the nickname “The Newark Flash” for his speed and facility on the tenor saxophone.
Photo of the entrance at Birdland from a postcard. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Just as he was beginning making his mark, Shorter was drafted into the Army. “A week before I went into the Army I went to the Cafe Bohemia to hear music, I said, for the last time in my life. I was standing at the bar having a cognac and I had my draft notice in my back pocket. That’s when I met Max Roach. He said, ‘You’re the kid from Newark, huh? You’re The Flash.’ And he asked me to sit in. They were changing drummers throughout the night, so Max played drums, then Art Taylor, then Art Blakey. Oscar Pettiford was on cello. Jimmy Smith came in the door with his organ. He drove to the club with his organ in a hearse. And outside we heard that Miles was looking for somebody named Cannonball. And I’m saying to myself, ‘All this stuff is going on and I gotta go to the Army in about five days!’”
Max Roach, Three Deuces, NYC, ca. 1947 (Source: William P. Gottlieb/Wikimedia Commons)
The Jazz Messengers
Following his time in the service, Shorter had a brief stint in 1958 with Horace Silver and later played in the house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. It was around this time that Shorter began jamming with fellow tenor saxophonists John Coltrane and fellow Polar Music Prize Laureate Sonny Rollins. In 1959, Shorter had a brief stint with the Maynard Ferguson big band before joining Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in August of that year.
Previous Laureate and collaborator Sonny Rollins in Stockholm in 2007.
The Jazz Messengers was a group of young jazz musicians led by drummer Art Blakey that performed in different constellations from the beginning of the 1950s until 1990, when Art Blakey passed away. The Jazz Messengers became a proving ground for many young musicians who started under the direction of Blakey and then continued with successful solo careers – Donald Byrd, Joanne Brackeen, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and Branford Marsalis (who then played with Shorter's fellow Polar Music Prize Laureate Sting in the 80s), to name a few.
The second Jazz Messengers album, recorded after Wayne Shorter joined the band.
Going Solo
Shorter remained with the Jazz Messengers through 1963, becoming Blakey’s musical director and contributing several key compositions to the band’s book during those years. Shorter made his recording debut as a leader in 1959 for the Vee Jay label -Introducing Wayne Shorter - and in 1964 cut the first of a string of important recordings for the Blue Note label.
Album Cover "Introducing Wayne Shorter"
Meeting Miles
In 1964 Miles Davis invited Wayne to go on the road. He joined Herbie Hancock (piano), Tony Williams (drums) and Ron Carter (bass) for what would become Miles Davis Second Great Quintet. This tour turned into a 6 year run with Davis in which he recorded a number albums with him. Along with Davis, he helped creating a sound that changed the face of music. In his time with Miles he crafted what have become jazz standards like Nefertiti, E.S.P., Pinocchio, Sanctuary, Fall and Footprints.
Shorter & Miles and the great Quintet
Herbie Hancock congratulates Wayne Shorter to the Polar Music Prize.
“Wayne is a real composer…he knew that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your satisfaction and taste…”
– Miles Davis
Miles Davis ca. 1947 (Source: William P Gottlieb/Wikimedia Commons)
Simultaneous with his time in the Miles Davis quintet, Shorter recorded several albums for Blue Note Records, featuring almost exclusively his own compositions, with a variety of line-ups, quartets and larger groups including Blue Note favourites such as Freddie Hubbard. His first Blue Note album of nine in total was Night Dreamer recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in 1964 with Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones. The later album The All Seeing Eye was a free-jazz workout with a larger group, while Adam’s Apple of 1966 was back to carefully constructed melodies by Shorter leading a quartet. Then a sextet again in the following year for Schizophrenia with his Miles Davis band mates Hancock and Carter plus trombonist Curtis Fuller, alto saxophonist/flautist James Spaulding and strong rhythms by drummer Joe Chambers. These albums have recently been remastered by Rudy Van Gelder.
The complete Wayne Shorter on Blue Note discography 1964-2016.
The Weather Report
1970-1985
In 1970, Shorter co-founded the group Weather Report with keyboardist and Miles Davis alumni, Joe Zawinul. The Weather Report came to be one of the first internationally acclaimed groups introducing the jazz fusion genre, mixing jazz, rock and so called world music influences. Throughout the years, Shorter and Zawinul would be the steady members of the band, the other members shifting throughout the years, of course influencing and developing the sound. The Weather Report remained the reference fusion group through the ’70s and into the early ’80s before disbanding in 1985 after 16 acclaimed recordings, including 1980’s Grammy Award-winning double-live LP set, 8:30.
10 years of The Weather Report: "Sweetnighter", 1972
10 years of The Weather Report: "Heavy Weather", 1977, containing what would become a new standard, "Birdland"
10 years of The Weather Report: "The Procession", 1983
After Weather Report, Shorter continued to record and lead groups in jazz fusion styles, including touring in 1988 with guitarist Carlos Santana, who appeared on the last Weather Report disc This is This! In 1989, he scored a hit on the rock charts, playing the sax solo on Don Henley’s song “The End of the Innocence” and also produced the album Pilar by the Portuguese singer-songwriter Pilar Homem de Melo.
He also released a succession of electric jazz albums for the Columbia label — 1986’s Atlantis, 1987’s Phantom Navigator, 1988’s Joy Ryder.
"Atlantis", 1985
"Phantom Navigator", 1987
"Joy Ryder", 1988
1990–2000
In 1995, Shorter released the album High Life, his first solo recording for seven years. It was also Shorter’s debut as a leader for Verve Records. Shorter composed all the compositions on the album and co-produced it with the bassist Marcus Miller. High Life received the Grammy Award for best Contemporary Jazz Album in 1997.
Shorter would work with Hancock once again in 1997, on the much acclaimed and heralded album 1+1. The song “Aung San Suu Kyi” (named for the Burmese pro-democracy activist) won both Hancock and Shorter a Grammy Award.
In 2009, he was announced as one of the headline acts at the Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco.
The Wayne Shorter Quartet
By the summer of 2001, Wayne began touring as the leader of a talented young lineup featuring pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, each a celebrated recording artist and bandleader in his own right. The group’s uncanny chemistry was well documented on 2002’s acclaimed "Footprints" Live! Shorter followed in 2003 with the ambitious Alegria, an expanded vision for large ensemble which earned him a Grammy Award. In 2005, Shorter released the live Beyond the Sound Barrier which earned him another Grammy Award. “It’s the same mission…fighting the good fight,” he said.
“It’s making a statement about what life is, really. And I’m going to end the line with it.”
The Wayne Shorter Quartet, from left: Brian Blade, Wayne Shorter, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci (Source: Photo by Dorsay Alavi)
For his 80th birthday, Shorter was back on Blue Note and released Without A Net, together with his quartet. Instead of retrospectives and best of albums, Shorter keeps looking ahead.
"The saxophonist turns 80 this year, but his music is as fresh as ever."
– USA Today, 2013
"Without a net", 2013
Content of biography is presented here as it was published in 2017.
Header photo by Robert Ascroft.
All pictures from Polar Talks, the ceremony and the banquet by Annika Berglund, © Polar Music Prize.
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Marie Ledin
Managing Director
marie.ledin@polarmusicprize.org
Alfons Karabuda
Chairman of the Polar Music
Prize Award Committee
alfons@polarmusicprize.org
Polar Music Prize
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