Zawinul Online

On the same day that Joe Zawinul passed away, Wilson Turbinton, the New Orleans keyboardist known as Willie Tee, died at age 63. Zawinul fans may know him as the composer of “Can It Be Done” on Weather Report’s Domino Theory album. His brother, saxophonist Earl Turbinton, died on August 3. He was 65. Earl is best known to Zawinul fans for having played on Joe’s 1971 eponymous album.

Joe got to know the Turbintons while he was a member of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. According to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “In the late 1960s, Willie Tee & the Souls performed everywhere from the Apollo Theater in Harlem to the Ivanhoe on Bourbon Street. After hearing the band at the Ivanhoe in 1968, jazz musician Cannonball Adderley encouraged Mr. Turbinton to record an instrumental album. The album was never released, but the master tapes were recently rediscovered in the vaults of Capitol Records, [Leo] Sacks said.” It’s not far-fetched to assume that Tee’s funky style had some influence on Joe.

Earl’s playing on the Zawinul album was remembered years later by drummer Billy Hart in Brian Glasser’s book, In A Silent Way. “Earl Turbinton was chosen to play the ‘In A Silent Way’ theme, and the way he played it was so beautiful. Everyone was just stunned. That was the first time that the full version of ‘Silent Way’ had been played. Everyone left the studio knowing something special had happened. For years, we all talked about it, saying something spiritual had happened.”

Earl often told of being asked by Joe to become a founding member of Weather Report. It’s doubtful that Weather Report would have had two sax players, so it seems more likely that Joe and Earl discussed forming a band around the same time that Joe, Wayne and Miroslav got together. (If anyone has more details about Earl and Joe, I’d love to hear from you. You can send me email to the address on the About page). In any event, Earl opted to go out on the road with B.B. King.

Both Earl and Willie were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, eventually relocating to Baton Rouge from their native New Orleans. Joe didn’t forget his friends, and a few months after Katrina hit, he held a benefit concert called “Charity Event for the Lost Children of New Orleans” at Birdland and invited Willie to be his special guest. Earl, who suffered a stroke in 2002, was unable to attend. Photographs of the event can be found on Willie Tee’s web site.

For more about Willie Tee, see Jon Parales’ obituary in the New York Times. For more about Earl Turbinton, see Keith Spera’s obituary in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

When I started this web site several years ago, I knew in the back of my mind that if I kept it going long enough, I would have to write this article. That doesn’t make it any easier. I woke up this morning to the very sad news that Joe Zawinul passed away today in Vienna. “Joe Zawinul was born on July 7, 1932 in earth time, and on September 11, 2007 in eternal time. He lives on,” his son Erich said in a statement. Indeed he does live on! Joe was an absolutely unique figure in jazz who led an incredible life. His music has been a part of me since I was a teenager, and it always will be.

I would like to extend my deepest condolences to Joe’s sons, Anthony, Erich and Ivan. They also lost their mother and Joe’s wife of over 40 years in July.

Lately I’ve been listening to World Tour pretty much every day. For some reason, I just got on this roll that I had to hear it everyday. I’ll be listening to it again this morning as I drive to work.

Many Zawinul Online visitors have expressed their feelings about Joe’s passing, and you can read their comments on the Memorial page that I established as a permanent part of this web site. If you would like to share what Joe has meant to you, visit the Memorial page where you you can log in (to combat spam) and leave a message. If you prefer, you can send me email at the address on the About page. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

I will have more to say about Joe after I’ve had time to reflect on his passing. Without a doubt there will never be another Joe Zawinul. God bless him and his family.

[Note that the memorial messages posted by Zawinul fans around the world have been moved to the permanent Memorial page.]

Regrettably, Joe’s illness has forced the cancelation of his much anticipated September 6 reunion with Wayne Shorter at Jazz à la Villette 2007.

I do not have any further details regarding Joe’s condition or other concerts that are planned. My thoughts and prayers remain with him and his family.

The Associated Press reported this morning that Joe Zawinul was admitted to a hospital in Vienna for an undisclosed illness. “The group declined to confirm reports by Austrian public broadcaster ORF that Zawinul was seriously ill, saying the musician had requested that his rights as a patient and a private person be respected.” ORF later reported that “there is no mortal danger” to Zawinul.

Joe recently concluded a six-week European tour. During the tour his physical condition became noticeable to fans, as he required a wheelchair to get to the stage and was unable to stand to introduce the band members as he customarily does. A report by Marco Piretti on the Zawinul Fans mailing list indicated that Joe’s playing was top notch during a recent performance in Italy, but that he appeared to be exhausted afterwards and had lost weight. Another Zawinul Online visitor reported that at the August 1 Zawinul Syndicate concert in Hungary, Wayne Shorter joined Joe on stage to play a spontaneous, improvised ballad.

Joe is in our thoughts and prayers, and we hope for a full recovery and many more years of music.

A Zawinul Online visitor tipped me off to the events listing for Jazz à la Villette 2007, the jazz festival held each September at Cite de la Musique at Parc La Villette in Paris, France. Lo and behold, on September 6 the Zawinul Syndicate is scheduled to perform with a special guest: none other than Wayne Shorter.

Wayne is one of the festival’s featured musicians this year, and the Syndicate concert is the last of four performances over five nights at La Villette by Shorter. On September 2 he will play with the Gretchen Parlato Quintet. On the fourth he will perform with his own quartet and the National Orchestra of France, and the next evening Wayne’s quartet will be paired with the Imani Winds.

Although Joe and Wayne have appeared on the same bill at various jazz festivals over the years, to my knowledge they have not performed together since the 1991 Miles Davis tribute concert, also at La Villette. So this would seem to be a pretty special event, indeed.

Joe will kick off his European summer tour by performing three concerts with the Konse Conservatory of Music Workshop Band. This is something Joe did last year with graduating students of the Vienna Conservatory of Music. The band will consist of three saxophones, two trumpets, trombone, Joe, a full rhythm section, and six singers. Joe is providing the arrangements, including Ernie Wilkens’ “Dizzy’s Business,” Thelonious Monk’s “Little Rootie Tootie,” and some of Joe’s own tunes.

After that, the Syndicate embarks on a five-week tour of Europe, with performances at several major jazz festivals along the way.

See the Tour Dates page for the details.

All About Jazz has posted a lengthy article about Joe by R.J. DeLuke. It touches on a lot of subjects including Weather Report, Miles, and Joe’s early experiences with the electric piano. Joe also talks about the making of Brown Street, and comments on the current jazz scene. It’s worth a read.

Brian Glasser, author of the book In A Silent Way, A Portrait of Joe Zawinul, sent this review of the Zawinul Syndicate at London’s Jazz Café on March 19. It is in two parts. The first is a conventional review that will appear in a UK jazz magazine. It is followed by a postscript Brian wrote for Zawinul Online readers.

It’s been three years since we last had Zawinul—who is both almost 75 and totally ageless—in our midst, although there’s been a fair amount of disc activity to tide old fans over and win some new ones: a Syndicate double album recorded at his nightclub in Vienna; the Weather Report Best Of, with its priceless DVD of the Pastorius-Erskine group; and Brown Street, the Vince Mendoza-arranged big-band album of Zawinul compositions, which has garnered universal A-star ratings.

But real live Zawinul has always been something special, and no news is good news on that front—he’s the same as ever, and showing no signs of mellowing, slowing down or otherwise compromising. That’s an admirable achievement in itself, when so many others seem to be forced to conform in one way or another. Meanwhile the Syndicate has had a refresh, with an extra (hand-)percussionist in the shape of Brazilian Jorge Bezerra; his countryman Alegre Corréa on guitar; and Moroccan Aziz Sahmaoui on vocals and percussion. Add the Mauritian bassist Linley Marthe and the Belgian/DR Congolese vocalist Sabine Kabongo and you’ve got a wonderful embodiment of Zawinul’s deep-seated one-world ethos.

These are all good players of course, but the biggest applause for a new recruit was reserved for a recidivist—Ivorian drum marvel Paco Sery. Undoubtedly the group has an extra magic when he’s in it, and it was fascinating to watch how he and Zawinul manned the engine room for the band throughout. (Zawinul’s professionalism in this respect is surely borne of his long early years spent in service as a sideman to the greats.) That said, Zawinul’s lead playing was also a masterclass in rhythmic subtlety and tonal colouring.

As usual, the repertoire consisted of some Syndicate tunes, some Weather Report stuff and a few party pieces for the band members. The best of the latter was the gorgeous duet between Zawinul and an mbira-playing Sery. The best of the former were a killing version of “Madagascar” (originally on Weather Report’s Night Passage album), its wide-ranging dynamics and smouldering sexiness reinvented brilliantly; and “Rooftops of Vienna,” the bring-the-house-down, hundred-mile-an-hour closer.

Zawinul Online Postscript:

If people could read in between the lines of the above, they might see this: Zawinul’s gigs are, in my opinion, always very good. That’s partly because there’s—still!—no one who comes close to doing what he does musically; and partly because he is a consummate professional who understands the obligation to work for his pay. But some shows—the vast majority that I’ve been to—go way beyond “very good.” I assume that all of this site’s visitors have seen him a few times over the years, so I don’t need to go into details.

This was his first of three nights at a venue that is not one of London’s finest. It’s cramped for the musicians on stage, and for the standing audience in front of them too; and the sound is not brilliant. I’ve also heard that the hospitality for bands is less than top-of-the-range. All of which might explain why I found Joe slightly subdued on this particular night—a little disengaged during other’s solos, a little less boisterous at the mic and so on. But if the overall musical effect was a couple of points down from the max, there were concomitant benefits: for instance, it freed up the spectator to study particular aspects of the show more closely

So I was reminded—as I mention in my ‘official’ review—by the mastery of Zawinul’s tonal selection and manipulation on his keyboards. He has some new sounds each tour, and he unfailingly deploys the right ones at the right time. Besides that, he bends and distorts notes at the same time as he’s playing important, obviously improvised lines. The man’s brain must have some elaborate, high-capacity wiring; and remarkably, at the age of nearly 75 and 60-odd years into his career, it’s showing no signs of degeneration or even lazy habits.

Also—and again I touch on this above—his prowess as an accompanist is amazing. Linley Marthe is a fabulous bass player who makes a huge contribution to the group, but Zawinul and Paco Sery, in tandem, are the people with their hands and feet on the band’s controls. Zawinul’s comping—now there’s a small word that encompasses a thousand skills—and bass lines are laser-like in their accuracy and power, generating a strong-flowing river of sound to transport the tunes. Zawinul likened Sery to Paul Gonsalves in the Ellington orchestra—someone who would leave from time to time but always come back to the fold. The drummer seems to have caused some administrative headaches in his time, but surely neither he nor Zawinul can doubt the enormous mutual benefit of his presence in the Syndicate.

So: the best Syndicate gig I’ve seen? No. But a fantastic evening’s music? Oh yes.