# Joe Zawinul is deservedly renowned for his pioneering role in the Jazz world combining the elements of world music rock and jazz: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/07/07/joe-zawinul-is-deservedly-renowned-for-his-pioneering-role-in-the-jazz-world-combining-the-elements-of-world-music-rock-and-jazz-video/
- Published: 2018-07-07T00:04:26+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**07.07. – Happy Birthday !!! It may be a word overused but there isn’t truly a 
more appropriate way to describe keyboardist/composer Joe Zawinul.**

Austrian born, Joe Zawinul emigrated to the US in 1959 where he played with Maynard
Ferguson and the great Dinah Washington before joining alto saxophonist great Cannonball
Adderley in 1961 for nine years. With Adderley, Zawinul wrote several important 
songs, primarily the slow and funky hit “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” which reached the 
top on the Billboard magazine Pop Charts in 1967.

Zawinul then moved on to a brief but fateful encounter and collaboration with Miles
Davis, just at the time Miles was moving into the electric arena. It was Zawinul’s
tune “In a Silent Way”, in fact, which served as the title track of Miles’ first
electric foray, and Zawinul had a potent impact on _Bitches Brew_, as well.

He is one of a bare handful of synthesizer players who actually learned how to play
the instrument, to make it an expressive, swinging part of his arsenal. Prior to
the invention of the portable synthesizer, Zawinul’s example helped bring the Wurlitzer
and Fender-Rhodes electric pianos into the jazz mainstream.

After releasing his debut solo album on Atlantic in 1970, Zawinul and saxophonist
Wayne Shorter put together what was to become the most important jazz group of the‘
70s and beyond, Weather Report. Drawing on the power and theatricality of rock and
R&B, while maintaining allegiance to jazz and the pure spirit of improvisation, 
they tapped into the so-called “fusion”” movement of that decade while carving out
their own unique niche. Bandmembers came and went, including Miroslav Vitous, Alphonso
Johnson, Jaco Pastorius, Victor Bailey, Peter Erskine and Omar Hakim, but the band
spirit prevailed over the course of 17 albums, including the ground-breaking album
_Black Market_ and the massively popular _Heavy Weather_, with Zawinul’s infectious
song “Birdland”. That song, in versions by Weather Report, Manhattan Transfer and
Quincy Jones, won separate Grammy awards in three successive decades, and Weather
Report itself won a Grammy for their momentous live album, _8:30_.

In 1985, after he and Shorter finally agreed to go in separate musical directions,
Zawinul continued to create adventurous new grooves in the group known as Weather
Update and then the Zawinul Syndicate, whose albums have included the Grammy-nominated
_My People_ in 1996 and the two-CD, Grammy-nominated _World Tour_ in 1998. Other
special projects have included an adventurous solo album, _Dialects_(1986), and 
work as producer and arranger on Salif Keita’s landmark album, _Amen_ (1991). Meanwhile,
as another tributary of his creative life, Zawinul has also pursued classical composition,
writing his ambitious “Stories of the Danube” in 1993 and working with renowned 
classical pianist Friedrich Gulda. His special solo project, _Mauthausen_released
in Europe in 2000, is a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust, and was performed
on the site of the Austrian concentration camp it is named after.

Among his prizes and awards, Zawinul has won the “best keyboardist” in Down Beat
28 times. Weather Report was a perennial winner in the “Best Band” category in Down
Beat, Swing Journal and other magazines around the world. He has honorary doctorates
from Berklee School of Music, and is the official Austrian goodwill ambassador to
17 African nations. In January, 2002, Zawinul has received the first International
Jazz Award, co-presented by the International Jazz Festival Organization and the
International Association of Jazz Educators.

Joe Zawinul is deservedly renowned for his pioneering role in the Jazz world combining
the elements of world music rock and jazz. In fact, many of the worldbeat sounds
we take for granted today, simply wouldn’t exist without his revolutionary compositions
and performances with Miles Davis in the late 60s, Weather Report in the ’70-’80s,
and The Zawinul Syndicate in the ’90s evolving into the year 2004.

![Картинки по запросу Joe Zawinul](https://media.gettyimages.com/
photos/joe-zawinul-keyboards-performs-at-the-north-sea-jazz-festival-on-july-picture-
id530276135)

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