小简介：Joe Zawinul虽然是一位来自欧洲，古典音乐的中心，奥地利，但是他却可以抓住爵士乐的即兴演奏的自由精神。由於他对音乐保持好奇心与开放的态度，让他有一股力量在60年代与70年代，成为摇滚爵士与融合爵士的重要一员，他非常擅长於利用电子合成乐器制造出人性化的声响，这是他的特点之一。 在前辈之中Duke Ellington是Joe Zawinul最欣赏的音乐家，因此他也在作曲与编曲的工作上下很大的功夫，从灵魂爵士的小品到大编制的爵士乐曲都有。除了Duke Ellington之外，他受到George Shearing and Erroll Garner的影响很大。 Joe Zawinul在六岁时开始学习手风琴，後来继续在维也纳的音乐学院学习古典钢琴。1952年时与萨克斯风手Hans Koller合作演出，这是他开始对爵士乐产生兴趣的重要开端。接着他带领一个三重奏乐团在法国与德国做演出。1958年移民到美国，虽然他得到柏克来音乐学院的奖学金，却只念了一星期的时间，便来到小喇叭手Maynard Ferguson的乐团，演奏约八个月的时间。1959-61年间担任女歌手Dinah Washington的钢琴手。接着与小喇叭手Harry "Sweets" Edison合作八个月的时间，然後加入萨克斯风手Cannonball Adderley的乐团演奏约九年之久。1969年与小喇叭手Miles Davis合作，他开始往电子合成乐器上表现，专辑In a Silent Way便是此时的作品。 1970年时与Wayne Shorter 等人组成乐团Weather Report。这个乐团让他更加有自信，也有更大的发挥。结束乐团Weather Report之後，他重新然起对古典音乐的兴趣，1987-94年之间与古典音乐钢琴家Friedrich Gulda共同合作。 by Richard S. Ginell Joe Zawinul belongs in a category unto himself — a European from the heartland of the classical music tradition (Vienna) who learned to swing as freely as any American jazzer, and whose appetite for growth and change remains insatiable. Zawinuls curiosity and openness to all kinds of sounds made him one of the driving forces behind the electronic jazz-rock revolution of the late 60s and 70s — and later, he would be almost alone in exploring fusions between jazz-rock and ethnic music from all over the globe. He is one of a bare handful of synthesizer players who actually learned how to play the instrument, to make it an expressive, swinging part of his arsenal. Prior to the invention of the portable synthesizer, Zawinuls example helped bring the Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos into the jazz mainstream. Zawinul also has became a significant composer, ranging (like his idol Duke Ellington) from soulful hit tunes to large-scale symphonic jazz canvases. Yet despite his classical background, he now prefers to improvise compositions spontaneously onto tape, not write them out on paper. At six, Josef Erich Zawinul started to play the accordion in his native Austria, and studies in classical piano and composition at the Vienna Conservatory soon followed. His interest in jazz piano, initially influenced by George Shearing and Erroll Garner, led to jobs with Austrian saxophonist Hans Koller in 1952 and gigs with his own trio in France and Germany. He emigrated to the United States in late 1958 after winning a scholarship to Berklee, yet after just one week in class, he left to join Maynard Fergusons band for eight months, where Miles Davis first took notice of him. Following a brief stay with Slide Hampton, Zawinul became Dinah Washingtons pianist from 1959 to 1961, and then spent a month with Harry Sweets Edison before Cannonball Adderley picked him to fill the piano chair in his quintet. There Zawinul stayed and blossomed for nine years, contributing several compositions to the Adderley band book — among them the major pop hit Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Walk Tall, and Country Preacher — and ultimately helping to steer the Adderley group into the electronic era. While with Adderley, Zawinul evolved from a hard bop pianist to a soul-jazz performer heavily steeped in the blues, and ultimately a jazz-rock explorer on the electric piano. Toward the end of his Adderley gig (1969-1970), he was right in the thick of the new jazz-rock scene, recording several pioneering records with Miles Davis, contributing the title tune of Davis In a Silent Way album. After recording a self-titled solo album, Zawinul left Adderley to form Weather Report with Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous in November 1970. Weather Report gave the increasingly self-confident Zawinul a platform to evolve even further as his interest in propulsive grooves and music from Africa and the Middle East ignited and developed. He gradually dropped the electric piano in favor of a series of ever more sophisticated synthesizers, which he mastered to levels never thought possible by those who derided the instruments as sterile, unfeeling machines. Weather Report eventually became a popular group that appealed to audiences beyond jazz and progressive rock, thanks in no small part to Zawinuls hit song Birdland. When Zawinul and Shorter finally came to a parting of ways in 1985, Zawinul started to tour all by himself, surrounded by keyboards and rhythm machines, but resurfaced the following year with a short-lived extension of Weather Report called Weather Update (which did not leave any recordings). Weather Update quickly evolved into another group, the Zawinul Syndicate, which over the span of a decade tilted increasingly toward groove-oriented world music influences. Zawinul has showed renewed interest in his European roots, collaborating with fellow Viennese classical pianist Friedrich Gulda from 1987 to 1994, producing a full-blown classically based symphony, Stories of the Danube, in 1993, and following the near-disastrous Malibu fires of 1994, moving from California to New York City in order to be closer to Europe. In 2002 he released Faces & Places, his first studio album in several years and one that boasted an international roster of supporting musicians. Since that time he has released a handful of albums including Midnight Jam in 2005 and Brown Street in 2007. Though he continues to explore new musical paths at an age when most jazzers are long set in their ways, Zawinuls influence upon jazz has waned in recent years due to the jazz mainstreams retreat from electronics back to acoustic post-bop. But Zawinuls uplifting, still-invigorating later music may make him a prophet again if global music infiltrates the jazz world.