Customer Reviews

Absolute Zawinul

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow. Zawinul has left us. He promised an acoustic release during the halcion days of Weather Report. I long for a chance to hear THAT before I pass, but until then we have ABSOLUTE ZAWINUL. The beauty of this recording is chilling. Big Bad Joe shows each of his musical sides here. Track 4 titled PEACE reveals Zawinul in all his glory. Simply as good as composition gets. And the Ensemble is wonderful as Joe floats above them. All of this recording is a listening must. Buy it. Do it now and you'll find the Zawinul you know and love...and more. 5 STARS!

Completed just months before his passing, Absolute Zawinul is really a collaboration between Zawinul and the New York based Absolute Ensemble, an 18-piece electro-acoustic ensemble that fuses classical, jazz, rock and funk. conducted by Kristjan Järvi, Jarvi approached Joe with the idea of augmenting his music with a chamber orchestra, an idea that had been percolating around in Joe's mind for a few years. The arrangements by group guitarist Gene Pritsker were inspired by Joe's improvisations off of his recordings. When they got together to rehearse, the sheer density of the arrangements prompted Joe to exclaim that Pritsker had left little space to add anything of his own to the mix. They worked together, refining the process, all the way through the mix stage. The result is something unique in Mr Z's catalog, although in a way it is the culmination of a personal vision he was he was striving for his entire career, an idealized balance between the through composed material inspired by his early classical background and the spontaneous freedom born from his jazz discipline, two divergent sides of his musical character merged into one coherent entity. This certainly had been attempted before in his "Tales of the Danube", although not with the same degree of success found here. Here the integration between form and improvisation is seamless, as if the larger ensemble is just an extension of his keyboards and the the band sound. It is interesting to read how he put the Absolute Ensemble through "groove school", spending as much as four solid hours just teaching the drummer how to play a backbeat while the entire ensemble looked on. Jarvi jokes about how hard a taskmaster Joe was-his demand for rhythmic perfection and feel being legendary. Jarvi also speaks of Joe's concern with his legacy (as if he had anything to worry about!) The end result is this testament to the timeless staying power of Joe Zawinul's music, the high standards of his compositional integrity being highlighted in this, his final studio album.

Joe Zawinul made a lot of great recordings throughout his career and especially in the last couple of years of his life but I believe this is the culmination of everything. From beginning to end the Absolute Ensemble and the Zawinul Syndicate play with incredible energy and depth. If you liked the WDR Big Band recording and "75", this is better. I think Zawinul's hero, Duke Ellington, would have said that this music is "beyond category".

Joe only continued to get better. Peace, Ballad for Two Musicians, and The Peasant are masterpieces full of complexity and feeling.

This album if not the best one, but you cannot be happy if you miss

the last reunion

About a 3.5 star effort from one of the legends of fusion .

Joe has done some great things over the years in terms of pushing the envelope of music.

He is,however,a bit like Lennon without McCarthy on his solo stuff.

In Weather Report,his foil was Wayne Shorter and the collaborations of the two gave us some classic music that will never be equaled.

I'm just not real enthusiastic about his later stuff,although the album is an exception.

I like about 80% of what's being done,but the vocoder stuff gets a bit tedious and schmaltzy after about the 20th or 30th time you've heard it.

Interesting take on his compositions.

Outstanding!!!! You're missed Joe and hopefully there will be more to come from the vaults.