JOE ZAWINULThe Austrian jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who died on 11 September, 2007, aged 75, was one of the key figures in the jazz fusion movement and spearheaded the use of synthesisers in the genre.He wrote for and played with the likes of Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Maynard Ferguson and Dinah Washington, and later founded the influential group Weather Report.He won the Best Keyboardist award from American jazz magazine Down Beat 30 times.Josef Erich Zawinul was born on July 7, 1932, and was raised in a municipal flat in Landstrase, a poor area of Vienna. His father was a gas clerk who had married a gypsy woman. His twin brother, Erich, died of pneumonia at the age of four.Mr Zawinul showed musical talent at an early age and he received free tutorage in the piano, violin and clarinet at the Vienna Conservatory from the age of seven.He discovered jazz through movies and radio and in the 1950s began to play piano with leading Austrian musicians such as Hans Koller and the Fatty George Group.But post-war Austria was not the place for an aspiring international jazz star and in 1959 he emigrated to America after winning a scholarship at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.In 1961, Mr Zawinul joined the Quintet led by saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. During his nine-year stint with Adderley, Zawinul wrote, among others, the hit song Mercy, Mercy, Mercy and began to build up an enthusiastic following among the predominantly African-American jazz audience.But it was in the later half of the decade, with Miles Davis, the legendary trumpeter, that he helped create the new sound of “jazz fusion”, a blend of traditional jazz with rock ‘n’ roll and other musical styles. He played on the landmark album Bitches Brew, for which he contributed the 20-minute track, Pharaoh's Dance, which occupied the whole of side one.Joe Zawinul was one of the first musicians to use electric pianos and early synthesizers, taking advantage of phasing effects and Wah-Wah pedals, giving his compositions a modern and contemporary sound.He co-founded Weather Report with saxophonist Wayne Shorter (who had also worked with Davis) in 1971. Their biggest hit was the six-minute instrumental Birdland, named after a club in New York, taken from the 1977 album Heavy Weather. Birdland is one of the most recognisable pieces of jazz fusion and was a big hit on the disco scene.The Weather Report line-up was constantly changing throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, with Mr Zawinul and Shorter the only constant members, though the line-up did include the acclaimed fretless bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius who played with them for five years. The band won numerous awards over the years, including a Grammy for the 1979 live album 8.30.After the disbandment of Weather Report in 1985, Mr Zawinul released a solo album then formed a new band, the Zawinul Syndicate, and continued to tour heavily for two decades, during which time he brought even more musical influences into an already eclectic catalogue of styles.His wife Maxine, with whom he had three children, died earlier in 2007. He was survived by his three sons Anthony, Erich (who worked as his father’s sound engineer and occasional studio drummer) and Ivan. He died from a rare form of skin cancer and had been on a European tour only a week before being admitted to hospital.
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