Zawinul Online

The Zawinul Syndicate is in the midst of its month-long Spring tour, and we have some reports from Zawinul Online readers.

Mike Sheppard writes:

I just got back from seeing the band at the Jazz Café London on their third night. I saw the Syndicate there two nights in a row in the summer of 1991. Back then they went on into the early hours, after which I spent ages traveling across London on the night bus. Nowadays they finish at 11 p.m. while the tube is still running. You need to book a table and food in order to sit. My friend and I found the food was good and the view was good, although the PA obscured Aziz.

Most important, the band was cooking from the start. Joe’s bands are like a cauldron of eternal gumbo to which fresh ingredients are added every night. I respect any musician who gets to play with Joe, but the return of Paco Sery always brings a special spice to the mix. Linley Marthe was equally stunning. I’m not qualified to say if he’s playing even better than three years ago when the Syndicate last visited, but he demonstrated phenomenal chops on his solo, where he really let loose. The level of interaction between the entire band was sensational. Aziz Sahmaoui, Alegre Corréa and Jorge Bezerra each brought their own vigour to the music, so that I never missed their illustrious predecessors. Sabine Kabongo has made her own place in the music. Her solo feature on “Can It Be Done” was a great tribute to Joe’s eternal quest for new sounds and killer grooves.

As has been said before, catch this band if you can. Travel far if necessary, for inspiration is guaranteed.

Dick Koster caught the band in Holland:

Zawinul has just left de Boerderij, Zoetermeer, Holland. Again, great respect for the master and his fine group of international group musicians. They are the best. The East 12th street band came to kick some? Can it be done? Yes. With the World Tour 97 sound of Paco Sery on drums, combined with the 2007 “smilin’” Brazilian flavour of Jorge Bezerra, Jr. and the Marrakesh influence of Aziz Sahmaoui singing soundscapes, the band gave a surprisingly fresh and dynamic performance, illustrated with songs like “Zansa II” (bright and shiny), and “Indiscretions” with “Black Market” interacting and “Two Lines.”

After the break, the band was even more powerful. Evolving with “Café Andalusia,” “Fast City,” a modest “Can It Be Done” (sung soulfully by Sabine, backed by the most beautiful keyboard sounds of an appreciative Zawinul), “Badia/Boogie Woogie,” “Tower of Silence” and the finale: “Rooftops of Vienna.” Party!

Marked something unusual during this show? Maybe. At the end Zawinul introduced the band members but forgot to mention Aziz. It was very sweet to see the way Jorge tried to attend Joe–again back behind his keyboards–about this small non conformity. But no niggling!

A great show. A great band. A fantastic audience. Dear Joe, Aziz, Paco, Jorge, Lynley (making fun and comfort of his great skills, and probably never gets tired?), Sabine and Alegre: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Finally, Nick Bloomfield wrote a short note after seeing the Syndicate’s first London show:

I’d like to pass on some thanks to Joe and his crew. I went to the first performance at the Jazz Café in London on Monday last. I had the most brilliant time, sat right in front of Joe’s keyboard stack!

Afterwards, a lady from Joe’s team arranged for me to meet Joe, who signed my Brown Street CD–fantastic! If you could pass on my grateful thanks I’d appreciate it. It was an evening of great memories for me. (By the way, the band bought the house down–of course!)

Zawinul’s self-titled 1970 album will be re-released this Spring by Mosaic Contemporary, a new division of Mosaic Records. According to the Mosaic press release, the new imprint is “dedicated to reissuing and compiling timeless recordings from the annuls of Contemporary Jazz.” The Mosaic Contemporary line “will focus on compilations and more commercially viable material, with the Mosaic attention to detail and commitment to excellence intact.”

The Zawinul re-release will return to print an important album that was both a precursor to Weather Report’s first album, as well as a strong work in its own right. It was Zawinul’s third solo album for Atlantic, and was by far his most significant statement to date. Given that it was originally released about the same time as that first Weather Report album, I’ve always thought Zawinul was overlooked. But it was critically well received, garnering a four-and-a-half star review in Down Beat, in which the reviewer concluded by saying, “[Zawinul] is the work of a complete musician who has transcended categories and is certain to have a profound influence on the direction music will take in the ’70s.”

Also due from Mosaic Contemporary is Ultimate Jaco Pastorius, a compilation scheduled for release on April 2. The CD includes 10 tracks culled from Jaco’s solo work, as well as with Weather Report and Joni Mitchell.

Mosaic Contemporary is an exciting new venture that I hope does well. Label director Matt Pierson said in the press release, “Our goal is to fill a significant void that exists in the jazz business. Due to the major labels either pulling back drastically in this area or leaving the business altogether, there is an opening for us to set the record straight, musically speaking. Although we are well aware that there has been significant contraction in the marketplace, the major labels are no longer able to effectively serve what remains of the jazz and adult fan base. And no company is better suited to attack this initiative than Mosaic.”

As one who came up with jazz in the seventies, I wish them well.

The news seems to get better and better for Weather Report fans, as there’s been a recent revival in bringing the band’s material to market. Last Fall saw the release of Forecast Tomorrow, which includes an entire 1978 Weather Report concert on DVD. And of course there’s Zawinul’s recent album, Brown Street, which casts a number of Weather Report tunes in new guise with the WDR Big Band.

Now comes the DVD Weather Report: Live at Montreux 1976, due April 17 from Eagle Rock Entertainment. The Montreux Jazz Festival folks have recorded and videotaped their concerts for years, and their sister company, Montreux Sounds, in conjunction with Eagle Rock, has been bringing out an entire line of “Live at Montreux” DVDs.

This DVD captures Weather Report in the summer of 1976 during Jaco Pastorius’ first year. He had recorded on the album Black Market earlier in the year, and made his first appearance with the band on April 1. The line-up included Alex Acuña on drums and Manolo Badrena on percussion, along with Joe and Wayne.

Bootlegs of this concert have floated around the trading circuit for years. (In fact, you can probably find clips on YouTube right now.) But this is the first time this concert has been released officially, and we can expect the quality to be first-rate. And at $14.98, the price is right as well. I haven’t been able to verify the regions for which the DVD will be available; hopefully it will be US, Europe and Japan. This is Weather Report at the cusp of greatness. A must for Weather Report fans.

Another Montreux production of note is Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter: Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded at Montreux on July 14, 1988. This DVD is over two hours long and contains interviews with Santana and Shorter, as well as Montreux Jazz Festival founder Claude Nobs. The band included former Weather Report bassplayer Alphonso Johnson, as well as drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, who performed on Weather Report’s Tale Spinnin’. Among the tunes is Zawinul’s “Black Market” from the Weather Report album of the same name. Released in Japan in 2005, the new release from Image Entertainment came out on February 27 for the US market.

The Zawinul Syndicate’s Spring tour begins on March 8 at the jazzahead! conference and festival, where Joe will be presented with the jazzahead!-Škoda-Award. From the jazzahead! press release:

After successfully introducing the German Jazz elite last year, jazzahead! presents some of the most interesting European artists from Thursday, March 8th until Sunday, March 11th, 2007. Musicians from six countries will come together in the Congress Centre Bremen with backing from “Culture 2000”, the support programme of the European Commission, and a profile of the new Jazz scene in Europe will be heard. Along with new tones, there will also be world-famous stars to experience: Joe Zawinul will be distinguished on March 8th with the jazzahead!-Škoda-Award.

“In the previous years, the question was how independent is European Jazz in relation to the American model; now it’s hardly asked,” explains Professor Ul-rich Beckerhoff, artistic director of jazzahead!. “In the meantime, young musicians have – with fascinating ease and ability - mixed the various styles of Jazz with Rock, Pop, Classic or Ethno. And actually they have succeeded with it – not only to capture the experts, but also the hearts of the fans.”

One of the style-shaping fathers of this ability will be honoured with the jazzahead!-Škoda-Award: Joe Zawinul. He was born in Vienna in 1932 and, in the late 1950s, he had to decide to make a detour to the USA so he could become a star. As a scholarship holder at the renowned “Berklee College of Music”, he honed his skills as a pianist, keyboarder, composer and arranger so successfully that, after a short time, he worked with legends such as Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis. World fame arrived for Zawinul with Weather Report and their hit “Birdland”, which he composed in 1977. This mixture of modern Jazz with Rock and Pop elements cleared the way for a generation change. Later the border-crosser provoked the tradition-keepers again and, with the Joe Zawinul Syndicate, he also mixed World Music and Dance Grooves into his compositions. In doing so, he always follows his very simple yet very profound ideal: “Music, which is not dorky.” After several Grammies and his own postage stamp, he now receives the jazzahead!-Škoda-Award 2007. “For his special services for Jazz,” says Hans Peter Schneider, the managing director of the MGH Messe- und Ausstellungsgesellschaft Hansa GmbH, which arranged jazzahead!. “The event will be crowned with a following concert from the Joe Zawinul Syndicate and the Startalk.”

I’ve updated the Tour Dates page with the latest touring information I have received. I also understand the Paul Shigihara, guitarist for the WDR Big Band, will substitute for Alegre Corréa on March 8.

Brown Street, Zawinul’s live album with the WDR Big Band, will be released in the US tomorrow by Heads Up International. It was released in Europe last November and has gotten rave reviews from Zawinul fans who already have it, as well as earning a string of strong reviews from the critics. (See Stuart Nicholson’s review for the The Observer, and John Kelman’s review at All About Jazz.) I recently acquired my own copy, and it is as good as advertised. What’s cool about this double CD is that it presents Zawinul’s music in a form unlike any that has come before it: A big band that grooves like only Zawinul can.

Eight of the eleven songs featured on Brown Street come from the Weather Report catalog. Though Weather Report compositions have crept into the Zawinul Syndicate’s repetoire in recent years–with one or maybe two tunes performed in a given show–Zawinul is not one to dwell on the past. The impetus in this case was a December 2001 performance by the WDR Big Band in Long Beach, California, under the direction of Vince Mendoza, when Zawinul received the first International Jazz Award at the International Association of Jazz Educators conference. (See “Zawinul Feted at IAJE Conference.”) A follow-up performance was part of Zawinul’s 70th Birthday Gala at the Leverkusener Jazz Festival in November 2002. Zawinul did not perform with the big band at either of these events–the keyboard duties were handled by Scott Kinsey–but they paved the way for Joe and the big band to team up for a brief tour in the fall of 2005, anchored by a week-long engagement at Joe Zawinul’s Birdland in Vienna.

All of the pieces on Brown Street were arranged by Mendoza, with the exception of “Procession,” which was arranged by Joe. I recently asked Vince to comment on his arrangements–what prompted him to write them, and what challenges they presented. He told me:

The music for the WDR/Zawinul recording came in three installments. The earliest came from music that Joe asked me to arrange in 1989 and orchestrate based on compositions from his solo recordings (”March of the Lost Children” [from 1990’s The Immigrants] and “Carnavalito”). The next installment of music was part of the tribute to Joe that I conducted with the WDR Big Band at the IAJE convention and also at the Leverkusen Jazztage, where we also recorded the Brecker brothers “Some Skunk Funk” recording not too long ago. “Fast City,” “Night Passage” and “In a Silent Way” came from that project, and I took much more license with the structure of the tunes, as well as freedom in the way that I thought the tunes would best be presented by a big band. You might notice somewhat of a different approach to these pieces. I put a little more of myself in those tunes, and took some license to orchestrate the way I thought the tunes could be “re-told.” The final installment consisted of a set of pieces that were arranged from various periods in the Weather Report output, including “Brown street” and “Black Market,” which were orchestrated in a much more traditional way.

A lot of what I understood to be vital and fresh about jazz composition came from Joe and Wayne [Shorter]. Joe’s concept of ensemble writing is inherently big band friendly. I think he has deep roots in big band tutti writing, especially from Duke Ellington. However, I was always concerned with the ability to translate synthesizer lines to acoustic instruments, especially with melodies that are so specific to the original synthesizer timbres. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Synthesizers don’t blend in a similar manner to acoustic instruments. The best approach was to separate myself as much as I could from the aural memory of the original version and try to create a new palate. That is always the challenge with the use of electronics in acoustic music. And of course it always helped to go back to Duke. I tried to be sensitive to Joe’s suggestions and requests to, for example, make certain melodic ideas more prominent, or to use certain melodies that are the most important to the structure of the composition.

Most of the big band music that I have written has been based on my own compositions. Over the years I sort of fell into the discipline of arranging other people’s music. Of course I cannot say enough about the influence Joe has had on my approach to writing Jazz. His music is vital, and is always about improvisation and groove. Years back I was asked to do some orchestrations for his first project with the WDR band. It was in fact my first encounter with the WDR band. I have been working with that band steadily and have a lot of wonderful memories, and of course great recordings.

Zawinul gives Mendoza’s work high praise: “It’s almost a note-for-note adaptation, and it takes a lot of skill to score this music for a big band,” Zawinul says in the Heads Up press release. “Vince did an absolutely great job. He made it sound like Weather Report.” Indeed. This is an essential recording for Zawinul and Weather Report fans.

By the way, Vince tells me he will be working with Joe and the Metropole Orchestra of the Netherlands in January 2008. It’s possible we may see a CD out of this project as well.

This past weekend I had the privilege of hearing some of the mixes for the “20 Years of the Zawinul Syndicate” project. This is the project that I alluded to in an earlier news item, which will celebrate 20 years of the Zawinul Syndicate. It’s going to be killer. Three CDs of music culled from Syndicate concerts over the past 20 years. In fact, I think Joe and his son Ivan are going to have a hard time fitting everything they want to include onto three CDs.

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve been fortunate to hear the band many times over the years, and listening to these recordings was a trip down the Zawinul Syndicate memory lane. Among the gems are a handful of tunes from the Mike Baker-Gerald Veasley band of the early nineties. What a formidable band that was. Hearing some of the tunes–”Medicine Man” or “Victims of the Groove,” for instance–caused me to conjure up mental pictures of the band on stage at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. Gerald Veasley had such great stage presence. He seemed to have such fun on the bandstand, and it was felt by the audience. And boy could he groove!

One of the special treats that Ivan is working on is a sound montage containing various audio nuggets culled from Weather Report’s and Zawinul’s albums over the year. Long-time Zawinul fans will surely get a kick of out it. I believe this will segue into a grooving rap with Gerald Veasley that is very cool. I won’t say more as I don’t want to spoil it for you. There are also a number of duets between Zawinul and artists such as Bolot–the throat singer who performed on My People–and Arto Tuncboyaciyan.

It was also interesting hearing Mark Ledford with the band. The trumpet player and multi-instumentalist, who passed away last year, did a couple of European tours with the band in the nineties, and I believe he is the only horn player that Zawinul has had since Weather Report.

Ivan is intent on capturing the feel of a live Syndicate show. Dynamics are a key element of the band’s sound, which can go from a whisper to blasting out of the sound system, and Ivan wants to retain those dynamics on the CD.

All in all, this is going to be a significant summation of the Zawinul Syndicate to date. And I can’t wait to get it.

Welcome to the new Zawinul Online. I finally got around to giving the site its own domain, and in the process I spruced up the look a bit and added some new features.

When I started Zawinul Online back in 1999, my idea was to create a catalog of all the Zawinul material I could find on the Internet. But that was in the days before Google image searches and YouTube video. Keeping those links up-to-date proved to be a never-ending process that I couldn’t keep up with, so I’ve pared back the new Zawinul Online to home-grown content. Of course, I’ll also continue to provide news and tour information as I receive it.

We also have some new features. First, you can search the entire site. All of the news items from the old site have been migrated over, as well as specific articles and photo galleries that I created. Second, you can get an RSS feed. By subscribing to it, you can have the news delivered to you. And third, you can comment on news items. Feel free to give it a try when the urge strikes. Your comments won’t show up instantly, as I am moderating them to start. Also, if you do comment, don’t claim to be a public figure without providing me with a contact so that I can verify your identity. I don’t want people masquarading anonomously as someone else.

Finally, if you link to Zawinul Online, please change your links to http://www.zawinulonline.org. If you notice any probems with the new site, you can email me at the address provided on the About page.

Enjoy!

2007 marks the twentieth year of the Zawinul Syndicate (as well as Joe’s 75th birthday in July), and Joe and his son Ivan are putting together a special production to celebrate the occasion—a multi-disc set of Syndicate live performances recorded over the past two decades. It’s still in the mixing stages, but it should get released later this year.

Zawinul is the subject of a feature article in the January 2007 issue of Keyboard magazine. Joe talks about his approach to synthesizers and the Syndicate. Also included are transcriptions and lessons from Joe’s Weather Report days. All in all, it’s good stuff and worth seeking out. Joe was also interviewed this month by JazzTimes magazine, so look for an article later this year.

In addition to the Syndicate boxed set, Joe is working on a new solo album. In the Keyboard article, he says, “I play my acoustic instruments on it myself, including piano, accordion, guitar, flutes, drums, and percussion. It’s like Dialects, my last record, but more acoustic.” And Brown Street, the live album with the WDR Big Band recorded last year, is due for its US release next month on Heads Up International. It’s been getting rave reviews from those that have purchased the European release.

In terms of touring, Joe will undertake a month-long tour of Europe beginning in early March. The line-up will be Zawinul, Linley Marthe on bass, Paco Sery on drums, Aziz Sahmaoui on vocals and percussion, Jorge Bezerra Jr. on percussion, Sabine Kabongo on vocals, and Alegre Corréa on guitar and vocals.

Meanwhile, Joe traveled to New York this month to record with Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble. You may recall that Joe and the ensemble performed a program last summer entitled “Absolute Zawinul.” Now they are recording an album. This may seem reminiscent of the WDR big band album, but the ensemble’s instrumentation is unique, with an example of each instrument from a symphony orchestra. Joe says that the material will be different from the WDR big band album as well, including, for example, “Ice Pick Willy” from the Weather Report album Sportin’ Life and “Peace” from Dialects. By the way, the Absolute Zawinul performances were broadcast on German television; if anyone has a copy, I’d be interested in viewing it.

The photo below shows Zawinul performing with the Absolute Ensemble at Turin, Italy on September 17 of last year. It was taken by photographer Greg Rattà, who kindly granted permission to reproduce it here. (Click the image for a larger view.)

The Zawinul Syndicate made a couple of appearances in the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of October and early November. I caught the band at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, and they were smoking as usual. The line-up was Zawinul, Linley Marthe on bass, Aziz Sahmaoui on percussion and vocals, Alegre Corréa on guitar, Jorge Bezerra on percussion, and Roger Biwandu on drums. Although Biwandu has performed with Joe before—notably the Zawinul/Bobby McFerrin concerts in 2004 (man, has it been that long?!)—he was a late addition to this tour. He told me that he got the music two days before the first show and rehearsed with Linley Marthe before joining the band for the Blues Alley gigs in Washington DC. By the time we heard him here in the Bay Area he was a grizzled veteran of the Syndicate.

The band sounded great. The last time they were here, Sabine Kabongo was with them. She has since had a child and didn’t travel to the US for this tour. But vocalist and percussionist Aziz Sahmaoui made up for her absence. Making his first US appearances with the Syndicate, Sahmaoui was featured on the Karim Ziad tune “Louange.”

As I’ve said before, the Zawinul Syndicate doesn’t make many appearances in the states these days, so if they get anywhere near your neck of the woods, you need to see them.