Miles Davis Rarely Changed Wayne Shorter's Jazz Compositions (And That's A Big Deal)

Jazz music by nature is known for improvisation and the work Wayne Shorter did with Miles Davis in the Miles Davis Quintet has no shortage of free-flowing passages. As Davis himself wrote in his 1989 "Miles" autobiography, though, the university-educated saxophone player brought an exacting edge to the group, and to the jazz compositions they performed together. As Davis described, Shorter carefully wrote out scores for just how he wanted each part to be played which everyone in the group would then work from.

As Davis put it (via The New York Times), "[Shorter was] the conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did." Among Shorter's most well-known works with Davis is the 1968 album "Nefertiti." Speaking with Billboard, Shorter said, "You're a universe and beyond. If you wanna do something, you'd better stay on your toes — you study your stuff, you sponge up whatever you can."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB9kWpuam9lZLqquMSsZJ2Zpp7Abr7Aq5ylsV2YtaK6xp6bZq%2BRrrumedKhpquslafAbrbAs7Fmm5%2BivbC%2FyK2gqKajYq6vsIytn5qso2Kubq7IoGSdnZGhfA%3D%3D