Joe Zawinul - Brown Street
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.17 You Save: $13.81 (73%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.66 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Brown Street
Free Music Review: Joe Zawinul's greatest post-Weather Report disc
Hit: 5 Stars
What does it take to produce great improvised music?
I've often pondered that question as I've reviewed nearly a thousand discs on this Amazon site. Stars aligned? Fortuitously landing on exactly the right groove? Weirdly synchronious aesthetic?
I confess, I don't know.
But I think I've got enough savvy, enough musical acumen, to recognize it when it happens.
And believe me, it happens here. Majorly.
Listen. Everyone involved's totally nailed it on this exceptional disc: elegiacism (that is, accessible melancholy), that most important of jazz moves, veritable exudes from these grooves; refined yet raw explosiveness erupts out of this session with eldritch regularity; and reckless joi de vivre literally bursts out of the speakers.
Certainly, Weather Report was one of the most important groups to ever grace our airwaves. To conjure its spirit sans any postmodern irony or nostalgia is a move of major consequence. To do it with such absolute insousance, with such casual aplomb, almost defies comprehension. Yet that's what we're dealing with here.
That raises the question: Was Joe Zawinul the prime mover behind Weather Report? How could that be, with bass god Jaco Pastorius and tenor sax icon Wayne Shorter involved? Nevertheless Zawinul, here, somehow, manages to conjure and manifest the consummate jazz/accessible vibe, one that, no matter what the genre, nearly always achieves what Weather Report was designed to reveal.
Look. Zawinul fully on his game (as he is here) casually outdoes all the wannabe fusion outfits seeking to parlay Weather Report-ish sensibilities into the new millenium.
This glorious disc, a two-fer, deserves the highest possible marks. You'd be a fool to miss out on it.
Free Music Review: Phenomenal
Hit: 5 Stars
If you're a Weather Report fan, you'll love this CD. All of the songs were done by Weather Report and written by Joe Zawinul, who is performing them with the WDR Big Band at his Birdland Club. It was a celebration of his 70th birthday. Man, these guys can really cook. The arrangements are well done by Vince Mendoza and the exception is "Procession", which is arranged by Joe. They don't take away from Joe's or Weather Report's sound at all, in this writer's opinion. You can still hear his keyboard mastery, along with special guests Victor Bailey, Alex Acuna and Nathaniel Townsley.
I recently saw an interview in which Joe raved about the first American bands that he heard: Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. He said that their band's intonations were perfect. "Never made a mistake" he said. I wonder if Joe ever thought that one day his songs would be played by a band that fits that discription. The WDR Band is tight and treats his music beautifully. I recommend this CD highly and I'm glad that I own it as homage to a great musician and person.
Free Music Review: Zawinul performing his Weather Report Tunes
Hit: 5 Stars
I am moved to write this review after hearing of Mr. Zawinul's death at 75 on Sept. 11 '07 while listening to KCSM. (They played a 4+ hour tribute to the man and his music from his days with Cannonball and Miles thru today.) He was quite the innovator as a keyboard player and composer.
This CD recorded at his Birdland club in Vienna on Oct. of 2005 with the WDR big band. At first I leary about getting this disc but after hearing it I had to grab a copy. As Zawinul wrote the arrangments are basicaly Weather Report arrangments transformed into a big band setting. The playing here is impecable. All the solos by the band and Joe are out of this world!!!
All of the tunes recorded here are his great tunes all recorded at one point by Weather Report. Most of these tunes he had not played since The band broke up. It's great to hear these tunes again in a new light. Get this one today.
Also check out Vienna Nights also recored at Birdland wiht the Syndicate at 2 dates in 2004.
Free Music Review: How much do you miss this band?
Hit: 5 Stars
If there had never been a synthesizer, would Weather Report had to have been a big band? There's not a dull second over the course of two discs, and they could have put out two more. Never a huge fan of the big band as a youth, I now know it's the best way to get the maximum color out of a composition and it's arrangement (have you all seen the Pat Metheny Group stuff with the big band on You Tube?).
Mr. Mendoza, can you write charts for more of these tunes? Sponsors, funders, underwriters: can you please offer up some grants for the completion of such a project? Somewhere toward the end of "Night Passage", the volume is rising, the groove is SO intense, and I'm pleading "Don't stop, please don't stop!"
If Mr. Zawinul and Mr. Shorter should ever meet on stage again, this is how they should do it. Whether they do or not, Lord have mercy, someone get this record a tour in the U.S., and fast!
Buy it now-it's THAT good.
Free Music Review: This is This!
Hit: 5 Stars
There is not a cloud in the sky on this wonderful summer afternoon.
Joe Zawinul revisits the brilliance of Weather Report through an amazing concert that features the 15-piece WDR Big Band and an array of friends. The two-disc set was recorded in October 2005 at Zawinul's Birdland Club in Vienna, Austria, and features drummer Nathaniel Townsley, bassist Victor Bailey and percussionist Alex Acuna.
Adapted and orchestrated for a big band by Vince Mendoza, soloists like Karolina Strassmayer (alto sax on Black Market, March of the Lost Children, Procession), Paul Heller (tenor sax on Fast City) and Olivier Peters (soprano sax on Badia and Boogie Woogie Waltz) deliver outstanding performances that acknowledge the brilliant past, but illuminate the present as a means to set sail into the future.
The weather has never felt so good and Zawinul powerfully proclaims that Mr. Gone has been here all along.