The saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter has done much more than leave his footprints on our musical terrain. His body of work is a monument to artistic imagination. Throughout his extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped to define the sounds of each disctinct era in the history of jazz. Shorter is also a deeply spiritual man, a Buddhist whose practice is central to his life and work. As his fellow musical great Herbie Hancock puts it: "Wayne Shorter has evolved as a human being to a point where he can synthesize all the history of jazz into a very special, very alive musical expression. Nobody else can do that now." In this first biography on Shorter, written with his full cooperation and involvement, Michelle Mercer traces the interweaving of his artistic and spiritual journeys.

Today, in his seventies, Shorter is a living legend, "jazz's all-round genius, matchless in his field as a composer, utterly original as an improviser," as The New York Times has said. His influence will be felt in music and beyond for generations to come.

Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections and enriched by more then seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an intimate biography, an invaluable history of music from bebop to hard bop to fusion to pop, and a moving story of a man's struggle toward the full realisation of his gifts and of himself. A fascinating portrait of a great American artist, Footprints makes a vital contribution to the literature of music.

MICHELLE MERCER is a writer and a music commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice and Down Beat.

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