Joe Zawinul
b. Josef Erich Zawinul, 7 July 1932, Landstraáe, Vienna, Austria, d. 11 September 2007, Vienna, Austria. After studying music at the Vienna Conservatory, Zawinul's musical ambitions soon outgrew the limited opportunities for a jazz musician in Austria shortly after the war, but financial necessity meant that he spent the 50s almost exclusively involved in local session work. Playing piano in dance and radio orchestras, and working as the house pianist for Polydor Records, he played only briefly with the talented saxophonist Hans Koller in 1952. However, his fortunes improved suddenly in 1959, when he won a scholarship to Berklee College Of Music in Boston. Emigrating to the USA, he immediately received a huge amount of attention, and decided to spend the rest of 1959 touring with Maynard Ferguson. Two years with Dinah Washington followed this, and then in 1961 he began a musical collaboration with Cannonball Adderley (Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!, recorded in 1966) which was to last nine years. Although he recorded with other musicians during this period - most notably Miles Davis (In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew) - it was Zawinul's work with Adderley that spread his reputation as an inventive improviser and talented writer. His composition "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", now a jazz classic, won a Grammy Award for the group, and his use of the Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos helped popularise the instrument in the jazz world.
Listen to Joe Zawinul
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Albums
- (2006) Concerto Retitled
- (2006) The Rise & Fall Of The Third Stream
- (2005) Zawinul
- (2005) The Rise & Fall of the Third Stream
- (2005) Money In The Pocket
- (1986) Dialects
Top Tracks
- In A Silent Way
- My One And Only Love
- Peace
- Sharon's Waltz
- Doctor Honoris Causa
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