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CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Denys Baptiste, saxophonist, after his tribute session to the great US saxophonist Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter, 2012; Denys Baptiste, 2005 [Dirk Neven/CC; Richard Kaby/CC]

HERE’S a story of two powerful and epochal saxophonists, one from the US, the other a Londoner.

The first is Wayne Shorter, born in Newark, New Jersey in 1933, who died in March this year, after a lifetime of jazz invention. The musical director and fiery hornman of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in their most rampaging years between 1959-1963; leader of the series of ’60s insurgent albums for Blue Note, tenorist in one of Miles Davis’s most formidable quintets from 1964 -70, and co-instigator of Weather Report, a pioneering fusion band of electronic jazz. 

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