When Tina Turner fled an abusive marriage in 1976 with nothing but the clothes on her back, the home that sheltered her for six months belonged to Wayne Shorter. This episode traces his nearly 70-year career from Newark, New Jersey, where he was born in 1933 and so lost in comic books, outer space and science fiction that peers nicknamed him Mr. Gone. He did not start clarinet until 16, switched to tenor saxophone, earned a music education degree from NYU in 1956, served two years in the army, paid dues with Horace Silver and Maynard Ferguson, and in 1959 joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, quickly becoming musical director and primary composer at 26.

Recruited by Miles Davis in 1964 for the Second Great Quintet, Shorter wrote floating, elliptical compositions that Davis, a ruthless editor, left unchanged. He made the soprano saxophone his primary instrument, recorded 11 Blue Note solo albums including Night Dreamer and Speak No Evil, co-founded Weather Report in 1970 with Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous, later joined by Jaco Pastorius, and became a sought-after voice on ten Joni Mitchell albums, Steely Dan’s Aja and Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence. The hosts address the grief that shaped his later music: the 1986 death of his 14-year-old daughter Iska and the 1996 loss of his wife Ana Maria and niece Dalila on TWA Flight 800, and how more than 50 years of Nichiren Buddhist practice with Soka Gakkai International anchored him. His final act included the quartet with Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade formed in 2000, the Grammy-winning Emanon with a 34-piece chamber orchestra, retirement from performing in 2018, the opera Iphigenia with Esperanza Spalding and Frank Gehry premiering in 2021, a Newark street renamed Wayne Shorter Way in 2022, and his death in March 2023 at 89.

• How a late start and a music education degree gave Shorter an analytical foundation
• Why Miles Davis played his compositions exactly as written
• Weather Report and the bridge between acoustic jazz and stadium-scale fusion
• Compounding tragedy, Buddhist practice and music as a vow to uplift humanity
• Writing a Greek opera at 90 after he could no longer play the saxophone