{"id":524,"date":"2007-01-05T00:53:19","date_gmt":"2007-01-05T05:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=524"},"modified":"2018-08-19T07:57:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T11:57:45","slug":"joe-zawinul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=524","title":{"rendered":"Joe Zawinul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jazz pianist and com\u00adposer Josef Erich Zaw\u00adinul first came into promi\u00adnence as the founder of the band Weath\u00ader Report, which I will con\u00adsider sep\u00ada\u00adrately. He\u2019s been a major fig\u00adure in jazz since then. Though he emi\u00adgrated to the Unit\u00aded States from his native Aus\u00adtria as a young man, he always retained strong Euro\u00adpean roots, emo\u00adtion\u00adally as well as musi\u00adcally, and even\u00adtu\u00adally returned to Aus\u00adtria. My focus here is on two of his solo albums, Zaw\u00adinul<\/em> (1970) and Sto\u00adries of the Danube<\/em> (1995).<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the epony\u00admous title, the first one is essen\u00adtially a col\u00adlab\u00ado\u00adra\u00adtion of Zaw\u00adinul and Her\u00adbie Han\u00adcock. It\u2019s an ear\u00adly exam\u00adple of the fusion move\u00adment that swept Jazz in the sev\u00aden\u00adties, with Miles Davis, Zaw\u00adinul and Han\u00adcock at the fore\u00adfront. The Rhodes piano-echoplex-ring mod\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtor com\u00adbo of this album was soon to be super\u00adseded by syn\u00adthe\u00adsiz\u00aders. The jazz con\u00adven\u00adtions are still there, but Zaw\u00adinul is most\u00adly inter\u00adested in cre\u00adat\u00ading ambi\u00adent sound\u00adscapes, and the feel\u00ading is not spon\u00adta\u00adneous. In fact, it\u2019s hard to get emo\u00adtion\u00adally involved with this music. Only the first cut, the long piece called \u201cDoc\u00adtor Hon\u00adoris Causa\u201d, is sat\u00adis\u00adfy\u00ading. Woody Shaw par\u00adtic\u00adi\u00adpates on this piece, to good effect. The sec\u00adond cut, \u201cIn a Silent Way\u201d, is par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlarly dis\u00adap\u00adpoint\u00ading, because Miles Davis did a much bet\u00adter job cov\u00ader\u00ading it, lat\u00ader on. The rest is rather dry. Twen\u00adty-five years lat\u00ader, there is not much jazz left in Sto\u00adries of the Danube<\/em>, which is a sym\u00adphonic suite enlivened by frag\u00admen\u00adtary whiffs of jazz and mid\u00addle east\u00adern dance music. The melody of \u201cDoc\u00adtor Hon\u00adoris\u201d makes an appear\u00adance. It\u2019s pret\u00adty much an updat\u00aded ver\u00adsion of Smetana\u2019s Mauldau<\/em>, using a big\u00adger riv\u00ader and a less inti\u00admate palette. Most of it will give plea\u00adsure to the lis\u00adtener, espe\u00adcially since the move\u00adments grow more engag\u00ading towards the end. I wish I had more of his work in my col\u00adlec\u00adtion, so I could trace out the evo\u00adlu\u00adtion between these two albums.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jazz pianist and com\u00adposer Josef Erich Zaw\u00adinul first came into promi\u00adnence as the founder of the band Weath\u00ader Report, which I will con\u00adsider sep\u00ada\u00adrately. He\u2019s been a major fig\u00adure in jazz since then. Though he emi\u00adgrated to the Unit\u00aded States \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-ct-listening-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9284,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/9284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}