Wayne Shorter: Work in Progress

ABSTRACT Originality (and the creativity that attends it) is central to jazz. If jazz musicians hope to keep the idiom creative and vital, then a primary way they can achieve this is through the cultivation and ongoing development, of individual voices and personal languages. Tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter has developed an individual voice in part by reinterpreting his own music – and by extension the present language of jazz – in a number of ways. This essay examines Shorter’s quest for newness through his frequent reanimation of musical ideas that he had already played, musical ideas that were not new. The main focus of this essay is Shorter’s manipulation of melody, particularly recycling melodic ideas from the tunes themselves. By drawing on his compositional and improvisational craft, Shorter finds fresh ways to present those ideas. Such melody-centered strategies are in evidence in all of the music he has been involved in: composing; improvising on his own music and that of others; and arranging/rearranging his own music and that of others. Examples of these practices are provided from across his recorded career.