Artist: Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. 

Shorter came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he joined  Miles Davis's  Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion  band Weather Report. He recorded more than 20 albums as a bandleader. 

Many Shorter compositions have become jazz standards, and his music has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise, and commendation. Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards. 

Herbie Hancock said of Shorter's tenure in Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet: "The master writer to me, in that group, was Wayne Shorter. He still is a master. Wayne was one of the few people who brought music to Miles that didn't get changed."  Davis said, "Wayne is a real composer. He writes scores, writes the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound. ... Wayne also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn't work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste." 

Shorter remained in Davis's band after the breakup of the quintet in 1968, playing on early jazz fusion  recordings including In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew (both 1969). His last live dates and studio recordings with Davis were in 1970. 

Shorter formed the fusion group Weather Report in 1970 with Davis veteran keyboardist Joe Zawinul and bassist Miroslav Vitous. The other original members were percussionist Airto Moreira and drummer  Alphonse Mouzon. After Vitous' departure in 1973, Shorter and Zawinul co-led the group until the band’s break up in late 1985.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he toured in the V.S.O.P. quintet. This group was a revival of the 1960s Davis quintet, except that Freddie Hubbard filled the trumpet chair. Shorter appeared with the same former Davis bandmates on the Carlos Santana double LP The Swing of Delight (1980), for which he also composed several pieces. From 1977 through 2002, he appeared on 10 Joni Mitchell  studio albums, gaining him a wider audience. He played an extended solo on the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album  Aja. 

Shorter worked with Herbie 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.