This month we feature Wayne Shorter, the iconoclastic composer and tenor saxophonist whose work with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Weather Report and through his own solo discography has influenced generations of like-minded visionaries to push the boundaries of jazz. As a member of the quintet, Shorter once said, “it wasn’t the bish-bash, sock-’em-dead routine we had with Blakey, with every solo a climax. “All of us wrote some songs, I wrote a couple of things myself, but the main writer: Wayne,” Hancock told me over the phone recently. But most of the things we recorded were written by Wayne.” The quintet broke up in 1968; Shorter worked with Davis until 1970. In recent years, even though they’d been collaborators for several decades, Hancock and Shorter became best friends.

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