Joe Zawinul - The Essential Joe Zawinul '2014

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. In a Silent Way / Waterfall (Live)
02. Directions / Dr. Honoris Causa (Live)
03. Unknown Soldiers
04. Jungle Book
05. Five Short Stories
06. Cannon Ball
07. The Juggler
08. Mr. Gone
09. The Orphan (Live)
10. 8:30 (Live)
11. Madagascar (Live)
12. Badia / Boodie Woogie Waltz (Live)
13. Carnavalito
14. The Great Empire
15. Zeebop
16. Peace
17. 6 A.M. / Walking on the Nile
18. Shadow and Light
19. Criollo
20. No Mercy for Me (Mercy, Mercy, Mercy)
21. Carnavalito
22. Black Water
23. Medicine Man
24. Little Rootie Tootie
25. South Africa
26. Patriots


 Read MoreIn a Silent WayAt age six, Josef Erich Zawinul started to play the
accordion in his native Austria, and studies in classical piano and composition
at the Vienna Conservatory soon followed. His interest in jazz piano, initially
influenced by George Shearing and Erroll Garner, led to jobs with Austrian
saxophonist Hans Koller in 1952 and gigs with his own trio in France and
Germany. He immigrated to the United States in late 1958 after winning a
scholarship to Berklee, yet after just one week in class, he left to join
Maynard Fergusons band for eight months, where Miles Davis first took notice of
him. Following a brief stay with Slide Hampton, Zawinul became Dinah Washingtons
pianist from 1959 to 1961, and then spent a month with Harry Sweets Edison
before Cannonball Adderley picked him to fill the piano chair in his quintet.
There Zawinul stayed and blossomed for nine years, contributing several
compositions to the Adderley band book -- among them the major pop hit Mercy,
Mercy, Mercy, Walk Tall, and Country Preacher -- and ultimately helping to steer
the Adderley group into the electronic era. While with Adderley, Zawinul evolved
from a hard bop pianist to a soul-jazz performer heavily steeped in the blues,
and ultimately a jazz-rock explorer on the electric piano. Toward the end of his
Adderley gig (1969-1970), he was right in the thick of the new jazz-rock scene,
recording several pioneering records with Miles Davis, contributing the title
tune of Davis In a Silent Way album.

After recording a self-titled solo album, Zawinul left Adderley to form Weather
Report with Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous in November 1970.
Weather Report gave the increasingly self-confident Zawinul a platform to evolve
even further as his interest in propulsive grooves and music from Africa and the
Middle East ignited and developed. He gradually dropped the electric piano in
favor of a series of ever more sophisticated synthesizers, which he mastered to
levels never thought possible by those who derided the instruments as sterile,
unfeeling machines. Weather Report eventually became a popular group that
appealed to audiences beyond jazz and progressive rock, thanks in no small part
to Zawinuls hit song Birdland.

Zawinul: Stories of the DanubeWhen Zawinul and Shorter finally came to a parting
of ways in 1985, Zawinul started to tour all by himself, surrounded by keyboards
and rhythm machines, but resurfaced the following year with a short-lived
extension of Weather Report called Weather Update (which did not leave any
recordings). Weather Update quickly evolved into another group, the Zawinul
Syndicate, which over the span of a decade tilted increasingly toward
groove-oriented world music influences. Zawinul showed renewed interest in his
European roots, collaborating with fellow Viennese classical pianist Friedrich
Gulda from 1987 to 1994, producing a full-blown classically based symphony,
Stories of the Danube, in 1993, and following the near-disastrous Malibu fires
of 1994, moving from California to New York City in order to be closer to
Europe. In 2002 he released Faces & Places, his first studio album in several
years and one that boasted an international roster of supporting musicians. He
went on to release a handful of albums including Midnight Jam (2005) and Brown
Street (2007), the latter of which was issued the year his life was taken by
cancer.

Though he explored new musical paths at a time of life when most jazzers are
long set in their ways, Zawinuls influence upon jazz waned due to the jazz
mainstreams retreat from electronics back to acoustic post-bop. But with global
music continuing to infiltrate the jazz world of the 21st century, Zawinuls
uplifting, still invigorating later music may very well renew the departed
keyboardists reputation as a prophet in the years ahead. ~ Richard S. Ginell

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