Wayne Shorter was born August 25, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey. He played clarinet at Newark Arts High School before switching to saxophone, entering New York University in 1952. He joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1959, whose own story is told in full in Art Blakey's JazzProfiles.com profile, remaining until 1963 and eventually becoming the band's music director.

Shorter joined Miles Davis's modal jazz quintet as tenor saxophonist in 1964, staying with Davis through the trumpeter's early fusion experiments and leaving in 1970, by then playing soprano saxophone as well. He became the group's most prolific composer at times, contributing tunes including "E.S.P.," "Pinocchio," "Nefertiti," "Sanctuary," "Footprints," and "Fall." In November 1970 he teamed with old colleague Joe Zawinul and bassist Miroslav Vitous to found Weather Report, the foremost electric jazz-fusion ensemble of the decade, where he performed throughout the 1970s.

Across a career spanning more than six decades, Shorter received 12 Grammy Awards and the Polar Music Prize, acclaimed for his originality, compositional depth, and transformative approach to improvisation. He died March 2, 2023, at age 89.

Shorter's saxophone playing and composing, carefully conceived, harmonically complex, and endlessly winding, produced some of the most enduring standards in the modern jazz repertoire, and his path through Art Blakey's hard bop, Miles Davis's modal quintet, and Weather Report's fusion traces the entire arc of jazz's evolution across the 1960s and '70s in a single career.