The Archive of Legendary Composer and Musician Wayne Shorter Has Been Acquired By The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Photo: Kosboot, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wayne Shorter’s collection will be preserved by the Library’s Music and Recorded Sound Division, joining other music legends like Lou Reed, Leslie Gore, and Arthur Russell

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has acquired the archive of legendary musician Wayne Shorter. The archive encompasses documents from as far back as the 1950s, and comprises 128 linear feet of papers, as well as unpublished artwork, never before heard recordings, correspondence, and other memorabilia. The Shorter acquisition comes during an important yearlong celebration of the Library for the Performing Arts’ 60th anniversary.

Shorter, who passed away in 2023 at 89 years old, has touched virtually every aspect of jazz, influencing generations of artists in various fields to push the boundaries of music. Shorter’s sound is heard on his famous solo work, in compositions like “Black Nile,” “Yes or No,” “Infant Eyes,” “Footprints,” and “Speak No Evil” as well as through collaborations with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Weather Report, Milton Nascimento, Don Henley, Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, and his long-time best friend Herbie Hancock.

The archive includes: 

• 250 manuscripts and several hundred more partial holographs, including some of Shorter’s best-known compositions, such as “Lester Left Town,” “Footprints,” “Infant Eyes,” “Night Dreamer,” “E.S.P,” “Nefertiti,” and many others
• numerous work tapes on cassette, where Shorter would work out musical ideas by playing and practicing
• personal correspondence, and business and financial records, including extensive royalty statements and licensing records dating from the 1970s through the 2000s.

In celebration of the acquisition, the Library for the Performing Arts has partnered with Jazz at Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to present a curated evening of music showcasing Shorter’s varied and extensive oeuvre. The evening includes a performance by Palladium, the official Wayne Shorter repertory group, personally blessed by Shorter, and founded by producer and Shorter family-friend Jesse Markowitz. The free event—part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City festival and Library-themed week celebrating the Library for the Performing Arts’ 60th anniversary—takes place on Sunday, July 27, at 6PM at The Underground at Jaffe Drive at Lincoln Center.

“Shorter is the latest to join many phenomenal other artists at the Library who have made major contributions to their art forms, such as Martha Graham, George C. Wolf, and Lou Reed. The range of these archives demonstrates the breadth of items in our care, and are crucial for a diversity of future generations of artists, researchers, scholars, and writers,” said Roberta Pereira, Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of the Library for the Performing Arts.

“As the Library for the Performing Arts is committed to being a community hub and source of inspiration for artists and musicians, I knew in my heart that there could not be a better place for Wayne’s archive, and this was exactly what he had envisioned. For this reason I feel a profound sense of ‘Mission Accomplished’—I trust his legacy will be preserved for future artists, scholars, and frankly, for the future of humanity,” said Carolina Shorter, Wayne Shorter’s wife.

“Wayne Shorter created a vast body of beautiful and innovative work recognized the world over as one of the finest produced by an American musician of any idiom or genre. I am thrilled that we are given the honor to steward this extraordinary collection from a musician whose output has been a constant and inspiring presence in my own life. This landmark acquisition will make his extensive archive available to the public for study and performance and will be a boon for the Library,” said Kevin Parks, curator of the Music and Recorded Sound Division at the Library for the Performing Arts.

Born on August 25, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey, he gained prominence in the 1960s as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and later as a key figure in Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet. Shorter is celebrated for his complex compositions and unique improvisational style, often blending modal jazz with intricate harmonies and an elliptical sense of phrase. He had a prolific solo career and has collaborated with a wide array of musicians, solidifying his reputation as one of the most influential and widely admired figures in contemporary jazz with many of his compositions, such as “Footprints,” “JuJu,” “Mahjong,” “Speak No Evil,” and “Black Nile” becoming jazz standards.

With Miles Davis and also as a founding member of Weather Report, Shorter helped pioneer jazz fusion. He mentored important artists of a younger generation including members of his later regular working group Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade, as well as Terri Lyne Carrington and esperanza spalding. Shorter’s orchestral works have been performed at the LA Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, the Kennedy Center, and other prominent venues around the world. These works represent an important and under-acknowledged part of his legacy that is only now becoming more widely appreciated. 

Among his many honors and awards over the course of his career are multiple Down Beat readers’ and critics’ polls including ten consecutive years named as outstanding soprano saxophonist, a dozen Grammy awards, and a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2015. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1998. The following year Shorter received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Berklee College of Music. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, the Polar Music Prize in 2018 and received the Kennedy Center honor in 2018. In 2022, Shorter’s hometown of Newark named a street in his honor. He has recently been profiled in a three-part television documentary executive produced by Brad Pitt and directed by Dorsay Alavi, entitled Zero Gravity. 

About The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Since 1965, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has been dedicated to enhancing access to its rich archives of dance, theater, music, and recorded sound—to amplify all voices and support the creative process. As one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research centers—and one of the world’s largest collections solely focused on the performing arts—the Library’s materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, film screenings and performances. The collection at the Library for the Performing Arts includes upwards of eight million items, notable for their extraordinary range and diversity—from 11th-century music, to 20th-century manuscripts, to contemporary hip-hop dance. This year, the Library for the Performing Arts celebrates its 60th anniversary with a range of programming and special exhibits.