Looking beyond the obvious examples of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and the like, arguably one of the greatest jazz composers in history is the late Wayne Shorter. Primarily credited as the great saxophonist behind Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet, and Weather Report, throughout his career, Shorter also developed an extensive catalogue of unique and beautiful music. As music director of the Jazz Messengers, he delivered thrilling new hard bop anthems like “Ping Pong,” “One by One,” and “Hammer Head,” and was responsible for most of the original repertoire of Miles’ great post bop quintet of the 1960s. Shorter’s compositional voice is on full display on his classic albums Juju and Speak No Evil – virtually every song on those albums are now widely performed as jazz standards. Shorter’s works demonstrate a rich harmonic language with chords traveling surprising-yet-logical paths to a sound conclusion. Unusual harmonies were sewn together with tuneful melodies, so lyrical that they almost hide the innovative harmonic proceedings from view. Shorter’s compositions have had a profound and continuing impact on the sound of post bop jazz, and his ideas continue to be mined and developed by a myriad of artists today.

A majority of the jazz canon is centered on simple song forms lasting anywhere from twelve to thirty-two bars. But for some ground-breaking long-form composition, check out the music of the Pat Metheny Group, helmed by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. Together, they sought to expand the jazz vernacular by both simplifying its harmonic and melodic constructs and boldly exploring complex formal concepts. Metheny/Mays compositions blend complex jazz harmonies with simpler, triadic chords typical of folk Americana, as heard on American Garage on “(Cross the) Heartland” and the album’s title track. At the same time, the pair specialized in developing complex long-form works with many contrasting sections, pieces that more closely mirror a Strauss tone-poem than a tin-pan alley song. Works like “Phase Dance,” “First Circle,” and “Minuano (Six-Eight)” are truly kaleidoscopic, and Metheny’s vision for long-form composition culminates in the PMG’s final studio recording, The Way Up, an album-length composition running more than sixty minutes.

More recently, Esperanza Spalding continues the trend, exhibiting colorful harmonic combinations in a straight-ahead jazz setting on 2008’s Esperanza. Follow-up albums Chamber Music Society (2010) and Radio Music Society (2012) further develop her compositional voice combined with classical chamber music and commercial soul and funk, respectively. Her recent efforts, 12 Little Spells (2018) and Songwrights Apothecary Lab (2021) are even more expansive, drawing on world musics, the avant garde, and fundamentals of music therapy.

Thad Jones, Dave Holland, Renee Rosnes, Mary Halvorson. . . the list of great composers goes on and on. As you listen to your favorite artists blow fanciful improvised lines, you can also revel in the songs themselves by jazz’s greatest composers each time you tune in to Jazz 93.5.