Joe Zawinul
Brown Street

The spiritual testament of Joe Zawinul is a grand farewell, which, like few other records, testifies to the importance and great contribution that this extraordinary pianist, keyboardist, and composer has made to the music of the last forty years.

A musician with a sharp character, accompanist of the most intense formations of Cannonball Adderly in the fifties and sixties, collaborator of Miles Davis during his "electric turn" between the sixties and seventies, Zawinul, like many other musicians who shared that unique moment, remained enthralled by that experience and embarked on the path that would lead him to form the Weather Report.

The most famous and acclaimed jazz-rock group produced tons of seminal music, and several masterpieces, until the mid-80s, then the compositional flair and charisma of the great Austrian bandleader began to fade... On one side, fusion music took decidedly more commercial paths, winking at more "funk" sounds (Steps Ahead), on the other, precisely in those years, there was a backlash phenomenon, led by musicians like Terence Blanchard and the Marsalis brothers, who advocated a return to the origins of jazz, strictly aligned with the path traced by the great masters, acoustic and above all... Black. He must have suffered a lot during that period, oscillating between useless re-proposals of his historical band (Weather Update, Zawinul Syndicate) and vague, a bit pompous keyboard musings.

In this masterful live double CD from 2005, which also boasts very high sound quality, Zawinul abandons the vain aspirations of vacuous experiences like that of the Syndicate and focuses on an orchestral reinterpretation of his most beautiful compositions. In this, he is assisted by the WDR Big Band of Cologne, one of the most active and renowned at the European level, conducted and arranged by Vince Mendoza, who is perhaps the most original and effective of Zawinul's epigones.

Throughout the record, the shadow of the Weather Report dominates and overshadows, and I believe that's how it should be. Some band members are also recovered, as the credits also include percussionist Alex Acuna and bassist Victor Bailey.

The menu is as rich and appetizing as one might imagine: "In A Silent Way", "Night Passage", "Black Market", "A Remark You Made", more than enough to bring a tear to the eyes of enthusiasts.

On paper, it is not so simple to transpose jazz-rock into an orchestral dimension, but Vince Mendoza performs his task excellently, with very refined, often impressionistic arrangements, providing Zawinul's "talking" keyboards the right habitat to express themselves at their best. Mendoza constantly remembers his other great master, Gil Evans, and this influence is felt in the treatment of the winds, airy and enveloping ("In A Silent Way").

But that's not all: three or four great soloists emerge from the WDR Big Band, who decently dialogue with the leader, particularly Paul Heller, who takes on the unenviable task of replacing Wayne Shorter with a certain ease.

The Big Band displays plenty of grit and dynamism, transforming "Fast City" into a furious ride. Fans of the Weather Report's more "ethnic" dimension will find what they're looking for in the evocative version of "Black Market" present here.

Ultimately, an excellent work that seduces and leaves listeners fully satisfied at the end, perhaps with some minor slip-ups in the last tracks of the second CD, but it certainly makes us exclaim: "Goodbye, you old bastard... We will miss you..."