Hidden Archive of '60s Legend, Who Shaped Miles Davis' Golden Years, Finally Revealed Nina DerwinSeptember 5, 2025 at 1:11 AM 0 Photo by David Corio/Redferns Wayne Shorter may not be a household name, but chances are you've heard his work nonetheless.
- - Hidden Archive of '60s Legend, Who Shaped Miles Davis' Golden Years, Finally Revealed
Nina DerwinSeptember 5, 2025 at 1:11 AM
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Photo by David Corio/Redferns
Wayne Shorter may not be a household name, but chances are you've heard his work nonetheless. If not his musical performances, his influence.
The jazz saxophonist, who died in 2023 at the age of 89, had a career that spanned seven decades. Throughout his life, Shorter played with the likes of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan and Carlos Santana— and the list goes on and on.
It's only fitting that a musician with such a star-studded resume had the mementos to prove it, though to refer to his collection as mementos barely does justice to the treasure trove Shorter left behind. The world-renowned musician quietly built nothing short of an archive—scores, audio recordings, artwork, photographs and letters—spanning his storied career.
Despite keeping his personal artifacts close to his chest throughout his entire life, Shorter wanted the exact opposite in death. And now, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has finally acquired the collection of jazz history that the late icon had amassed. For the first time, Shorter's archive will be available for the world to witness as part of the library's Music and Recorded Sound Division.
Shorter was among the few who had the opportunity to become long-term collaborators of jazz icon, Miles Davis. In 1964, he joined Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, and even then Shorter was hard at work on what would someday become part of his archive.
"Miles just asked if I had any music and I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'Bring it.' We never had any rehearsals really," Shorter told Jazz Weekly in a rare interview. "We would just go to the studio and I had this book with music in it that I had been writing, some of this music before I went in the Army around 1956, when I was in my last year of college, I was writing some of this music and he used to say, 'You got the book?'"
The collection that now resides in the hands of the New York Public Library is, quite literally, Shorter's book.
"It's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts from every single phase of his career," Kevin Parks, curator of the Music and Recorded Sound Division at the New York Public Library, told The New York Times. "So that's the thing that sort of stands out to me, is that it's scores that he wrote going all the way back to the [Art] Blakey days, and even before, to there's a score somewhere in the collection dated a month before he died."
During his lifetime, Shorter no doubt saw the way his contributions to music impacted every genre and reverberated through generations. Through his archive, his reach is only broadened, his influence made even greater. It's rare for the world to encounter a musical genius, but rarer still to encounter such insight into his imagination.
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 5, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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