Shorter - who will be appearing with his quartet at the Cultural Centre Concert Hall on February 13 and 14 as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival - sees his music, and, indeed, all music, as part of a continuum. Although, if pushed, he'll acknowledge that his own career can be viewed, up to a point, in terms of phases.

Fusion fans may be disappointed to learn that Weather Report - which Shorter founded with keyboardist and fellow Miles Davis alumnus Joe Zawinul, and which hit the commercial big time in 1977 with Heavy Weather and Zawinul's composition Birdland - is not a phase he intends to revisit.

'He's having a good time with his band and I'm having a good time with mine,' Shorter says. 'Joe Zawinul's going to be 71 in July and I'm 70. It would be ridiculous for us to get together, but the marketing people would still jump all over it.'

A deeply serious musician, he has never cared about meeting the commercial expectations of the industry's money men, and a half century or so of having to rub shoulders with them has left him cynical about the business of music.

'The thing that frightens the money people - they may deny being frightened, but what gets to them - is how someone continues to be creative without money,' he says. 'They think they have it under control with all the rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues and Tin Pan Alley. I can see them right now working on Norah Jones and Alicia Keys, and anybody who seems like they want to be creative.

'They have that arrogant ignorance of the value of something. What we actually need are people who are willing to go down with the Titanic - and that's what I'm willing to do.'

It is ironic then that he is currently on a commercial roll, and partly because his most recent albums, Alegria and Footprints Live, have been a mix of old and new compositions.

Shorter is quick to point out that his non-belief in beginnings and ends applies to the music he's written, which he regards as unfinished.

'To me everything is eternal, so a song can continue and grow,' he says. 'A metamorphosis takes place over maybe 100 years or something, but people usually say it's the same item in new clothes.

'We have to get past anything that prevents us getting to a place of more free exchange of thought. I take what's best from the past and what is most brilliant and enlightening from the past, and use it as a flashlight to get through the darkness of the unknown. That's my little analogy.'

There's no room for doubt that, as a musician, Shorter has continued to evolve as he has grown older - particularly since his time with Weather Report (in which, despite its record sales and sold out concerts, many of his admirers thought he was wasted). With the electronics stripped away, audiences in recent years have been astonished by the range of tonal colours Shorter has been able to produce on his soprano and tenor saxophones.

A one-time visual artist who says he produces a painting or drawing 'about every 40 years', Shorter likens his musical technique to a painter's use of a palette, but stresses that you have to look - or listen - beyond the colours to get to the substance of the art.

'I'm melding the feeling of painting with orchestra work. That's what I'm doing right now, working on some orchestra stuff here,' he says. Before they come to Hong Kong, the quartet will do a week in each of London and Paris, trying out new material with local orchestras.

Shorter will decide after the performances whether the experiments are worth recording.

The quartet - comprising Shorter, pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade - were the key musicians on Alegria and have developed a close rapport. The leader of the band - who has no plans to hang up his horn any time soon - sees plenty of unexplored potential in the line-up.

'Even though they're all band leaders with their own groups, we call this combination 'The Family'. They were born a little after me, but they like to get together. We're going to see how this plays out.'

The band plays only acoustic instruments, although Shorter says it wasn't a policy decision - just the way things worked out. It does mean the music is more likely to appeal to those who admire his work with Art Blakey and the mid-1960s Miles Davis Quintet than those who first heard him during Miles' more turbulent Bitches Brew period or with Weather Report.

Alegria found the band revisiting three old Shorter favourites - Capricorn, Orbits and Angola - but also playing new compositions and arrangements that reflect his eclectic classical and world music interests. The Hong Kong concerts are likely to be similarly broad-based.

'If the music that you're doing is very creative, then people get it,' says Shorter. 'We've been playing in places and people have been getting it. Very young people. A 13-year-old girl came with her mother and said, 'I know what you're doing. You're being everything'.'

The Wayne Shorter Quartet appears at City Hall Concert Hall on February 13 and 14 at 8pm. Adult tickets are available at $480, $380, $280 and $220. Student tickets are available at $190, $140 and $110 from Urbtix outlets.

'We have to get past anything that prevents us getting to a place of more free exchange of thought. '