Jazz pianist and composer Josef Erich Zawinul first came into prominence as the founder of the band Weather Report, which I will consider separately. He’s been a major figure in jazz since then. Though he emigrated to the United States from his native Austria as a young man, he always retained strong European roots, emotionally as well as musically, and eventually returned to Austria. My focus here is on two of his solo albums, Zawinul (1970) and Stories of the Danube (1995).
Despite the eponymous title, the first one is essentially a collaboration of Zawinul and Herbie Hancock. It’s an early example of the fusion movement that swept Jazz in the seventies, with Miles Davis, Zawinul and Hancock at the forefront. The Rhodes piano-echoplex-ring modulator combo of this album was soon to be superseded by synthesizers. The jazz conventions are still there, but Zawinul is mostly interested in creating ambient soundscapes, and the feeling is not spontaneous. In fact, it’s hard to get emotionally involved with this music. Only the first cut, the long piece called “Doctor Honoris Causa”, is satisfying. Woody Shaw participates on this piece, to good effect. The second cut, “In a Silent Way”, is particularly disappointing, because Miles Davis did a much better job covering it, later on. The rest is rather dry. Twenty-five years later, there is not much jazz left in Stories of the Danube, which is a symphonic suite enlivened by fragmentary whiffs of jazz and middle eastern dance music. The melody of “Doctor Honoris” makes an appearance. It’s pretty much an updated version of Smetana’s Mauldau, using a bigger river and a less intimate palette. Most of it will give pleasure to the listener, especially since the movements grow more engaging towards the end. I wish I had more of his work in my collection, so I could trace out the evolution between these two albums.
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