# Herbie Hancock on the musician he never stopped learning from: “Wayne is like Yoda”

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/herbie-hancock-on-the-musician-he-never-stopped-learning-from-wayne-is-like-yoda/
- Published: 2026-11-02T03:00:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-02T04:21:00+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/herbie-hancock-wayne-shorter-yoda-of-jazz/
- Topics: Entertainment, Music

## Key points

- Hancock says Shorter kept teaching him new musical ideas.
- He likens Shorter’s wisdom to Yoda’s.
- They first met through Donald Byrd’s band.

## Summary

Herbie Hancock says Wayne Shorter remained a source of musical ideas and insight throughout their friendship, describing him as “like Yoda”. Their closeness matters because it shows how learning and creative exchange continued among musicians who had already shaped modern jazz.

Hancock first met Shorter while playing with Donald Byrd, then joined Miles Davis’s quintet in 1963 and helped recruit Shorter, who joined in 1964. Hancock also recalled Davis turning a wrong chord into an opportunity to improvise, a lesson in treating mistakes as “an event”. He said he and Shorter lived about ten minutes apart and shared a broad outlook on jazz, even when they did not agree.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.