Hints and tips:
...The music has an appropriate gentle impressionism, but it also has the art movement’s openness to other cultures, a sense that many breezes blow....
...Joe Zawinul’s “Midnight Mood”, originally an up-tempo bash, is interpreted by Evans as a late-night mood-piece....
...On Saturday, a Barbican triple bill marked the legacy of John Coltrane, who died 50 years ago, and that of his late wife, pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, who had such an influence on his late-life music...
...It was a dramatic marker for the Cameroonian-born bass guitarist’s ongoing exploration of the west African roots of Afro-Cuban music....
...The compositions still sound daring, while co-leaders Joe Zawinul on keyboards and saxophonist Wayne Shorter are even less inhibited than on the band’s studio recordings....
...Occasionally, he would add Zawinul’s original melody, successfully concluding an experiment of his own....
...Its core curriculum, though, is the deep exploration of Gnawa trance music....
...ultra-sharp and soulful horns and the web of rhythms is spun by drums and a single percussionist but if anything the excitement and melodrama is more intense and there is the same panorama of references – Joe Zawinul...
...Song titles such as “Goosebumps”, “Low Blow” and “Church” get at the music’s essence....
...The Barbican’s final-day celebration of Joe Zawinul’s music, which was to have featured the great keyboardist/ composer himself, continued as an uplifting tribute after the Weather Report co-founder died...
...The following evening at the Barbican, the BBC Big Band pays tribute to Weather Report founder Joe Zawinul, who died this year....
...He became known as “The Newark Flash”, meeting key figures such as saxophonist John Coltrane, who recommended him to Miles Davis, and pianist/keyboardist Joe Zawinul....
International Edition