Wayne Shorter Quotes

I remember once I asked Wayne for the time," Miller told Mercer. "He started talking to me about the cosmos and how time is relative." Miller and [Wayne] Shorter were waiting somewhere -- an airport, a train station, a hotel. The band's keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, who took charge of such matters as what the road crew was supposed to do and when, set Miller straight. "You don't ask Wayne shit like that," he snapped. "It's 7:06 p.m." [p.1]

BOP / SOUL JAZZ: RECOMMENDED LISTENING Cannonball Adderley, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” October 20, 1966 Art Blakey, “Moanin’,” October 30, 1958 Clifford Brown and Max Roach, “Sandu,” February 25, 1955 Art Farmer and Benny Golson, “Killer Joe,” February 6–10, 1960 Herbie Hancock, “Cantaloupe Island,” June 17, 1964 Lee Morgan, “The Sidewinder,” December 21, 1963 Wayne Shorter, “Witch Hunt,” December 24, 1964 Horace Silver, “Señor Blues,” November 10, 1956 Jimmy Smith, “Midnight Special,”April 25, 1960

It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn’t the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he’d ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world. He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar’s. He loved the four seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park’s bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his apartment, even if it was just the leaves of the tree outside in July or the thin shadows of its bare branches crawling along the plain brick wall in January. Tommy loved his career. He loved his friends. And he loved that first big bite of apple I watched him take each and every morning. Everything was perfect in the city, and as long as things remained the way he wanted them to, Tommy would continue to love the city forever. Which is exactly why his jaw dropped when he opened the letter he found in his mailbox that morning. The first bite of still un-chewed apple fell out of his mouth and firmly planted itself within the crack of that 113th Street sidewalk.

I gravitated toward music that invoked loneliness in me. Jazz. More to the point, the sound of the jazz saxophone. I started with the essentials—John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter

It was six o’clock by the time I was outside, but it was already dark. Typical for late fall. The days were getting shorter and shorter, the arc of the sun getting lower in the south sky and the shadows longer. In a few more weeks it would be dark by four and by the time Christmas rolled around, we’d only be getting seven hours of daylight, not a lot for the most part, but at least the sun would be shining. People new to the city always commented on that. Even though winter was cold and the days were short, the sun shone most of the time. And the sharper angle changed the wavelength of its light to the warmer reds and oranges, so even the color of the air would change.

In Seattle in October 2002, some music students had a brief Q&A with Wayne and his quartet. One student ingenuously asked him where he likes to play most: in auditoriums or clubs, in America or abroad? “It doesn’t make any difference where we play,” Wayne replied. “If you get fooled by those things, you’ll have things controlled by your environment. You’ll end up running away from your husband, trying to go to another place. And if you think you can ever really get to another place, you should know there’s a little cat sitting on your suitcase swinging his tail, who’s already got your trip planned out, and that cat’s name is Karma.

Genius to me means a lot of struggle. When you’re out of reach, out of the many cages of interpretation of what genius is, when you’re out of those cages, that genius takes on a terrific struggle.