Weather Report

[mjzee]

The Electric Joe Zawinul

His jazz compositions deserve more attention and respect

By JIM FUSILLI

December 30, 2006; Page P10

"Forecast: Tomorrow" (Columbia), Weather Report's recently released 39-track retrospective, supports the conclusion that the band was the best of the 1970s electric jazz-fusion groups. It also invites a reappraisal of Joe Zawinul, the keyboard player and composer who, along with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, founded the group.

Why revisit Mr. Zawinul and not his longtime partner? For one, Mr. Shorter is on the lofty pedestal he deserves, having more or less escaped the scorn of jazz purists who loathe electric jazz. In 2000, he introduced a dazzling new quartet that builds on the beloved acoustic postbebop model he helped create as a member of Miles Davis's great mid-1960s quintet. Several of Mr. Shorter's early melodic and harmonically complex compositions are part of the jazz canon, and his recordings with his new group, particularly the in-concert albums "Footprints Live!" and last year's "Beyond the Sound Barrier," both on the Verve label, suggest his latter period will be ripe for exploration as well.

As for Mr. Zawinul, his credentials ought to be beyond dispute too. He joined the Davis group as it began to explore electric jazz, coming over after a nine-year stint as pianist for Cannonball Adderly, for whom he wrote some 50 songs. From the beginning of the electric-jazz era, the Austria-born and classically trained Mr. Zawinul was the most imaginative keyboard player, blending brawny blocks of colorful chords with feathery filigrees. To hear him at work is to believe there's no sound he can't produce and that his surprising-but-inevitable choices will suit perfectly the music he's performing. He's been voted Best Electric Keyboard player 28 times by Down Beat magazine.

He isn't as widely acknowledged for his compositions, though he wrote Davis's "In a Silent Way" and two of the rare jazz songs to become mainstream hits -- "Mercy Mercy Mercy" for Adderly in 1966 and "Birdland" for Weather Report 11 years later. As "Forecast: Tomorrow" illustrates, Mr. Zawinul's compositions explore the full range of human emotions -- his ballads speak of loss and yearning as well as any modern jazz composer's. But, with the occasional exception of his three most famous tunes, not many Zawinul compositions are covered by traditional jazz artists -- a baffling oversight that suggests the bias against electric jazz still lives. Last year, on its album "Trio" (ECM), the Polish acoustic-jazz combo Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz reworked Mr. Shorter's Weather Report composition "Plaza Real." Many Zawinul tunes would do just as well in such thoughtful hands.

Nowadays, the 74-year-old Mr. Zawinul rarely returns to acoustic jazz and continues to rely on funk, rock and, most of all, African and Latin American rhythms and modes for his mix. At a late October performance at New York's Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the beautiful new temple of traditional jazz, Mr. Zawinul mostly played percussive funk, fronting a band of young musicians from Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco and Uganda. Not only did he avoid acoustic jazz, he barely tapped his Weather Report-era songbook, leaning heavily on his 2005 live album, "Vienna Nights" (BHM). The show was touted as the first by a fusion band at Jazz at Lincoln Center since it opened in 2004. With close to half the theater's 1,200 seats empty, who knows whether there will be another soon.

An extraordinary vehicle for Mr. Zawinul and Mr. Shorter, Weather Report regularly altered its lineup, changing drummers and bass players to adapt to an audience that increasingly included rock fans. The boxed set presents the initial unit as patient and ethereal, with Miroslav Vitous's acoustic bass providing a supple anchor; the band sounded much like the quieter moments of Davis's groundbreaking and once-disparaged "Bitches Brew" album, particularly on Mr. Zawinul's "Orange Lady," which he wrote for Davis. Another Zawinul composition that Davis recorded during that period, "Directions," is more fully realized in the previously unreleased Weather Report version as Mr. Shorter and Mr. Vitous prove fusion and bebop were never incompatible.

A live version of Mr. Shorter's "Nubian Sundance" demonstrates how the band became more assertive when Alphonso Johnson assumed the bass role. The arrival in 1976 of the brilliant bassist Jaco Pastorius made Weather Report a super-group that played with the power and brashness of a rock band and the adroitness and sophistication of a jazz combo. A DVD of a 1978 concert included in the package presents Weather Report at its height, though "Forecast: Tomorrow" is a reminder that while the Pastorius-era group is now legendary, it was extraordinary before his arrival and after he departed.

"Forecast: Tomorrow" reveals the richness of Mr. Zawinul's compositions and raises the hope that they will be appreciated one day for their musicality and capacity to communicate on an intellectual and visceral level. At times, the band's clever, sometimes remarkable performances obscure the beauty at the heart of his writing. But beauty is there, as well as adventure, daring and real harmonic invention. Sooner or later, bias will give way to the realization that Mr. Zawinul is a rare and wonderful jazz composer worthy of intelligent and passionate exploration.

[JSngry]

Yep.

[GregK]

It's gotta be me then. I'm just not hearing it. This is the reason I got the Weather Report box in the recent BMG sale because I need to re-listen to this music and find what I've been missing. I just haven't been able to connect the later, funky stuff with the early, acoustic (and to me, better) Miles-ish Weather Report. They don't even sound like they are playing the same kind of music

[Jim Alfredson]

I'll be picking this box set up, for sure. I need to get some Sydicate discs, too. Zawinul is an amazing talent.

[JSngry]

Indeed. And this is an amazing album:

[kh1958]

The Zawinul Syndicate played at the Caravan of Dreams years ago, and I got to sit in the front row--I thought he was amazing, by far the best player on electric keyboards/synthesizers I've ever heard--"The Minister of Doom" as bassist Gerald Veasley introduced him.

[JSngry]

I appreciate how that article focuses on his compositions. I've long felt that the best of his WR compositional output forms a body of work that goes far beyond "just" tunes to jam on. We're looking at a new (even though it's been 30 or so years now, you still gotta consider it "new" just because few, if anybody, have followed up on it) form of composition for a new type of instrumentation, one that delves into the ensemble possibilities of synths to create a new kind of "big band" format. It's a logical extension of the possibilities of a B-3 combined withthe "big band writing for small combo" style of Horace Silver.

Yeah, Zawinul's deep. Not everything he's done has been deep, not even, but oh well. The guy hears things that "nobody else" does. Ignore him at your own risk.

[JSngry]

At a late October performance at New York's Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the beautiful new temple of traditional jazz, Mr. Zawinul mostly played percussive funk, fronting a band of young musicians from Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco and Uganda. Not only did he avoid acoustic jazz, he barely tapped his Weather Report-era songbook, leaning heavily on his 2005 live album, "Vienna Nights" (BHM). The show was touted as the first by a fusion band at Jazz at Lincoln Center since it opened in 2004. With close to half the theater's 1,200 seats empty, who knows whether there will be another soon.

Must've been Bingo Night at the Cave...

[Jim Alfredson]

Yeah, I noticed that sentence, too. What a shame. This is NYC we're talking about here, right?

[JSngry]

Yeah. The Urban Cave.

[Jim Alfredson]

Indeed. And this is an amazing album:

Thanks Jim, just bought it via eBay.

[chris olivarez]

Count me as another fan of Zawinul.

Edited January 1, 2007 by chris olivarez

[Simon Weil]

What sets Zawinul apart, for me, is that he's a tunesmith.

Simon Weil

Edited January 1, 2007 by Simon Weil