Upcoming Gigs

The past couple of weeks have not been kind to the living history of jazz music; Max Roach and Art Davis' passing hit us hard, and Zoe Zawinul's death yesterday morning was a huge loss to us all.

Zawinul was one of the first musicians I came across and latched onto when I starting 'digging' jazz. Starting off with 'Kind Of Blue' (like so many others) I immediately found something in Cannonball Adderly's playing that led me to search out more of his stuff, and a random CD of live recordings lent to me by my sixth form tutor, with Nat Adderly and Joe Zawinul, grabbed me with both hands. 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy', 'Why Am I Treated So Bad?', 'Worksong', 'Walk Tall' - Zawinul's piano and keyboards were crucial to these tunes, and these tunes were crucial to my introduction to jazz music. Being a bassist, it didn't take me long to stumble across Jaco Pastorius and Weather Report, and Zawinul was right there again. I had 'Heavy Weather' on repeat for about six months straight when I was 18, and although I was couldn't ever quite tear my ears away from Jaco's relentless 16ths and false harmonics, Zawinul's composition, arrangements and playing intrigued me from the start.

I'm not a hardcore Zawinul fan - there's a large gap at the end of my loosely alphabetised CD collection which could be filled with his work, and it still takes me a bit of effort to get through his 20-odd minute 'Pharoah's Dance' on 'In A Silent Way'. But Joe Zawinul will always have been there right at the start of my jazz education, and for that I can only be thankful. He will be sorely missed.