Joe Zawinul's Fusion Revolution in New York

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Joe Zawinul and his band The Zawinul Syndicate will present an electrifying performance combining elements of jazz, world music and rock on October 27 & 28 at 8pm in Frederick P. Rose Hall. This concert will feature one of the most exciting electric jazz bands on the scene today, consisting of multi-instrumentalists and vocalists. Joe Zawinul (keyboards/vocals), Linley Marthe (bass), Jorge Bezerra Junior (percussion), Paco Sery (drums), Clovis Nunes Correa (guitar) and Aziz Samaoui (vocals/percussion) make up this great group.

Joe Zawinul is best known as the co-founder of the jazz super band Weather Report. Mr. Zawinul is also known for his collaborations with Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley. He is said to be one of the founding fathers of fusion jazz. With his current band, Zawinul Syndicate, he continues the forward-thinking movement of electric jazz and promises a night to be remembered. "The band and I are very excited to play at Jazz at Lincoln Center. People will be shocked! This is one great little music band with a unique rhythm concept and world class players."

Born in Austria, Joe Zawinul emigrated to the US in 1959. He joined alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley in 1961 for nine years and wrote several important songs, primarily the slow and funky hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, " which reached the top on the Billboard magazine pop chart in 1967.

After releasing his debut solo album on Atlantic in 1970, Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter put together what was arguably the most important jazz group of the 1970s, Weather Report. Drawing on the power and theatricality of rock and R&B, while maintaining allegiance to jazz and the pure spirit of improvisation, they tapped into the so-called "fusion" movement of that decade while carving out their own unique niche. Though band members came and went, the group's spirit prevailed over the course of 17 albums, including the groundbreaking Black Market and the enormously popular Heavy Weather, which included Zawinul's infectious song "Birdland." That song, in versions by Weather Report, Manhattan Transfer and Quincy Jones, won separate Grammy awards in three successive decades. Weather Report itself won a Grammy for its momentous live album, 8:30.

In 1985, after he and Shorter finally agreed to go in separate musical directions, Zawinul continued to create adventurous new grooves in the group known as Weather Update and then the Zawinul Syndicate, whose albums have included the Grammy-nominated My People in 1996 and the two-CD, Grammy-nominated World Tour in 1998. Other special projects have included an adventurous solo album, Dialects (1986), and work as producer and arranger on Salif Keita's landmark album, Amen (1991). Meanwhile, as another tributary of his creative life, Zawinul has also pursued classical composition, writing his ambitious "Stories of the Danube" in 1993 and working with renowned classical pianist Friedrich Gulda. His special solo project "Mauthausen, " released in Europe in 2000, is a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust, and was performed on the site of the Austrian concentration camp after which it is named.

Zawinul has honorary doctorates from Berklee School of Music, and is the official Austrian goodwill ambassador to 17 African nations. In January 2002, Zawinul has received the first International Jazz Award, co-presented by the International Jazz Festival Organization and the International Association of Jazz Educators. In 2002, he released the CD Faces and Places.

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