JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
One of the architects of modern jazz has died. Tenor saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter died this morning at the age of 89, according to his publicist. Shorter had a profound influence on jazz and pop music, and his music lineage stretched from Art Blakey to Miles Davis and from Steely Dan to Joni Mitchell. NPR's Felix Contreras has this appreciation.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: For fellow musicians and fans alike, Wayne Shorter was as much a philosopher as he was a jazz musician - dispensing short, zen-like parables in both words and through his horn.
WAYNE SHORTER: For me, the word jazz means I dare you.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAYNE SHORTER'S "ZERO GRAVITY TO THE 10TH POWER")
SHORTER: If I relied on just music as being my life, I have to look at music as one drop in the ocean of life.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS' "'ROUND MIDNIGHT")
SHORTER: Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that you require to sound like jazz.
(SOUNDBITE OF JONI MITCHELL SONG, "BOTH SIDES NOW")
CONTRERAS: That was Wayne Shorter from an interview with NPR in 2013. The common thread weaving those ideas together is an intense curiosity that began during his childhood in Newark, N.J. He carried it with him at NYU and then into the band that brought him to the attention of the jazz world, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS' "FREE FOR ALL")
CONTRERAS: Then, Wayne Shorter joined a band that reshaped the sound of small-group jazz, the Miles Davis Quintet.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS QUINTET'S "FOOTPRINTS")
CONTRERAS: His years with Davis, as well as a series of solo albums, burnished Shorter's reputation as a composer. Then, Shorter co-founded a group that carried him to an even wider audience, Weather Report.
(SOUNDBITE OF WEATHER REPORT'S "A REMARK YOU MADE")
CONTRERAS: It became the best-known jazz rock band of the late 1970s.
(SOUNDBITE OF WEATHER REPORT'S "A REMARK YOU MADE")
CONTRERAS: The latter part of Wayne Shorter's life was marked by over four decades of devotion to Nichiren Buddhism. It was seemingly perfectly suited for an expansive mind like Shorter's.
SHORTER: I was hearing about Buddhism, but then I started to look into it. I started to open up, find out what was going on in the rest of the world instead of the West.
CONTRERAS: Those teachings influenced the ideas he applied to jazz at the start of the new millennium, as he hand-picked a group of younger musicians to form the Wayne Shorter Quartet. His former bandmate Herbie Hancock would compare it to their work together with Miles Davis and called the Wayne Shorter Quartet the best small group in jazz history.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAYNE SHORTER'S "ZERO GRAVITY TO THE 10TH POWER")
CONTRERAS: For Wayne Shorter, that connection to the moment that is so much a part of jazz improvisation was also a lesson of Buddhism.
SHORTER: We have a phrase. It's honnin myo. It means, from this moment forward is the first day of my life. Put 100% into the moment that you're in 'cause the present moment is the only time - it's when you can change the past and the future.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERBIE HANCOCK'S "SONRISA")
CONTRERAS: The essence of jazz wrapped in Buddhist philosophy - one final lesson from Wayne Shorter. Felix Contreras, NPR News.
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