Composer and performer traversed numerous phases of jazz history, and fused his playing with the likes of Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and Carlos Santana
Wayne Shorter, one of America’s greatest jazz saxophonists whose career spanned bop, fusion and more, has died in hospital in Los Angeles, aged 89. His publicist confirmed his death to the New York Times.
Shorter was a central force in three of the 20th century’s great jazz groups: the Jazz Messengers, led by drummer Art Blakey, who established the mid-century “hard bop” style; the second iteration of Miles Davis’s quintet in the mid to late 1960s that led Davis to his electric period; and the hugely successful fusion group Weather Report, formed in 1970.
