Book Description

"The saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter has done much more than leave his footprints on our musical terrain. His body of work is a monument to artistic imagination. Throughout his extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz. Shorter is also a deeply spiritual man, a Buddhist whose practice is central to his life and work." "In many ways, Shorter's story is the story of modern American music. Born in Newark in 1933, he learned bebop as a teenager in cutting contests with Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins. In the 1950s, he graduated to some "hard-drinking, hard-bop years" with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1970s, Shorter and Joe Zawinul pioneered fusion in Weather Report; at this time Shorter began his transformative practice of Buddhism. Into the 1980s and 1990s, his picturesque solos graced pop tunes such as Steely Dan's "Aja" and recordings by Joni Mitchell and Carlos Santana. After the tragic loss of his wife on TWA flight 800 in 1996, Shorter emerged triumphant as the leader of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, a group critics have compared to John Coltrane's classic quartet and to Miles Davis's groundbreaking quintet." "Today, in his seventies, Shorter is a living legend, "jazz's all-around genius, matchless in his field as a composer, utterly original as an improviser," as The New York Times has said. His influence will be felt in music and beyond for generations to come." "Filled with musical analysis by Michelle Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an intimate biography, an invaluable history of music from bebop to hard bop to fusion to pop, and a story of a man's struggle toward the full realization of his gifts and of himself."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved