American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, considered one of the greatest jazz composers of the United States of America, died on Thursday in Los Angeles at the age of 89.

His agent, Alice Kingsley, confirmed to AFP in a written statement but did not reveal the cause of death for the musician, who was born on August 25, 1933 in Newark, near New York, and who influenced jazz for more than half a century.

Described in his obituary by The New York Times as a “groundbreaking” and “enigmatic” musician, he played with the greats—Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey—and excelled on both soprano and tenor sax, especially 1970s. and 1980s jazz fusion band Weather Report.

Eclectic and able to approach many musical registers, he sang with Milton Nascimento, Salif Keita, Joni Mitchell and even with legendary rockers from The Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana or Norah Jones.

From the 1960s, Wayne Shorter managed to impose a third voice in jazz, during the period of dominance of the legendary saxophonists John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins.

Together with their brother Alan Shorter (1932-1988), they played bebop, a style of jazz invented in the 1940s, and nicknamed themselves “Monsieur Bizarre” and “Docteur Etrange”.

He was one of the last living legends of the saxophone, a jazz instrument he took up in the 1950s after playing the clarinet as a teenager.

“I knew that people start playing an instrument at five years old, so I knew I had a lot of catching up to do,” he told The Washington Post in 2018 before receiving an award from the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington.

American trumpeter Wynton Marsalis bowed to someone who “perfected everything he touched, and who will remain a bearer of pentatonic perfection, a master of blues melodies, a hero of harmonic effects and a giant of the saxophone regardless of musical register.” (news.ro)