R.I.P. jazz legend Wayne Shorter

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Wayne Shorter

Legendary jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter died on Thursday in Los Angeles, according to a report from NPR. He was 89.

Wayne Shorter’s career spanned more than six decades and saw him release and perform on hundreds of records in his lifetime. Born in 1933 in New Jersey, Shorter took up clarinet as a teenager and later took up saxophone. In 1959, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and remained in the group for four years, and later joined Miles Davis‘ Quintent, and played on his early fusion albums In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew.

Around the same time as Shorter began playing with Davis, he also began releasing his own series of albums via Blue Note, including 1964’s Juju, 1965’s See No Evil, and 1966’s more conceptual The All Seeing Eye. Shorter released 23 albums under his own name during his lifetime, his most recent being 2018’s Emanon.

Shorter also was a member of the jazz fusion group Weather Report, performing on each of their albums up through 1986’s This Is This. He also collaborated with his share of non-jazz artists, having recorded with the likes of Santana and Joni Mitchell. He won 12 Grammy awards during his career, and in 2018, he was named as an honoree by the Kennedy Center.

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