Wayne Shorter will be recognized at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors in December. The Newark jazz great also announced a new album.
Wayne Shorter, the jazz saxophonist and composer from Newark, has been named a 2018 Kennedy Center honoree.
Shorter, 84, who has won 10 Grammys in his career, will be recognized at the 41st Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 2 at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C.
The other honorees this year are Cher, the composer and pianist Philip Glass and country music star Reba McEntire.
In a first for the honors, "Hamilton" co-creators Lin-Manuel Miranda, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and music director Alex Lacamoire will also be recognized "as trailblazing creators of a transformative work that defies category." The gala will be broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. on Dec. 26.
In 2013, Shorter performed at the Kennedy Center Honors to celebrate Herbie Hancock.
"I had no idea that they would reach that far away from the popular, well-known-artist box," Shorter told The New York Times, reacting to news of his honor.
Shorter, who was in Newark for NJPAC's Wayne Shorter Weekend in April of 2017, also announced his latest project, "Emanon," on Wednesday, a multiverse-inspired triple album that will be released by Blue Note Records on August 24.
The album will be accompanied by a a graphic novel written by Shorter, a longtime fan of comic books and sci-fi, and co-writer Monica Sly. NPR reports that the hero Emanon ("no-name" backwards), named after a Dizzy Gillespie work from the bebop era of the '40s, is the protagonist of the graphic novel.
"I want to do music that expresses eternity," Shorter told The Star-Ledger in 2008. "I want to do music that celebrates everybody who has had anything to do with expressing themselves -- as musicians, novelists, in dance, maybe even in politics."
When The New York Times asked Shorter if he would attend if President Donald Trump decided to come, he said he would be there either way. Last year, Trump and the first lady did not attend the event "to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction."
Wayne Shorter in the Arts High School yearbook in 1951.
The decision came in the wake of Trump's controversial comments about the white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia and after some honorees spoke out against the Trump administration and said they would not attend a related gala at the White House. The gala was ultimately canceled.
Shorter, a tenor and soprano saxophonist, graduated from Arts High School and grew up in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, engrossed by the sounds of bebop.
"Only a few of the guys from Newark were into modern jazz -- most were listening to Stravinsky (and) Beethoven," he told The Star-Ledger in 2011.
Shorter's first band, the Group, was inspired by Gillespie's famous Big Band. He would go on to perform with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and the Wayne Shorter Quartet.