Absolute Ensemble
Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble releases "Absolute Zawinul" featuring Joe Zawinul
March 23, 2010
US Release Date: March 23, 2010
Keyboardist/composer/bandleader Joe Zawinul (July 7, 1932 – September 11, 2007) was one of a kind. Born in Austria, Zawinul was classically-trained, but brought up on bebop, a sideman with Dinah Washington, Ben Webster, Cannonball Adderley, and Miles Davis, and a co-creator of fusion and the supergroup Weather Report with Wayne Shorter. If Zawinul was only to be remembered for his immortal compositions “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” “In a Silent Way,” and “Birdland,” his place in jazz history would be assured. But, his pioneering work with synthesizers and his early embrace of world music made him a true musical immortal.
So, a fitting tribute for such an Olympian master of music should come from an equally Olympian ensemble: Estonian-born conductor Kristjan Järvi’s elegant and invigorating Absolute Ensemble. An aggregation of self-described “musical omnivores,” formed in New York in 1993, Absolute Ensemble has abroad musicality that combines jazz, rock, classical and world idioms and makes them, in Duke Ellington’s words, “Beyond Category.” This recording, Absolute Zawinul, Zawinul’s last studio project, was conceived in 2004 after Järvi met Zawinul in his Birdland jazz club, and a brief stint of concerts together. “The collaboration was to explore some of the seven hundred-odd works Zawinul had composed but not yet realized,” Järvi says. “Joe did want to hear some of his favorite old tunes but in an entirely new way. Absolute arranger Gene Pritsker worked painstakingly to notate the complex and incomparably subtle improvisations Joe had laid down over the years … Joe’s wish was that the Absolute Zawinul project be about the musician he had become, not the musician he was thirty-something years before. He was adamant that he did not want to hear more ‘Birdland’ arrangements and Weather Report tunes.”
And those tunes are not heard here. Instead, this CD, which includes members of Zawinul’s last band, the Zawinul Syndicate (Sabine Kabongo, Paco Sery, Linley Marthe, Jorge Bezerra, Aziz Sahmaoui, and Allegre Correa), features eight works from the Zawinul songbook that highlight and showcase the full-flowering of Zawinul’s compositional genius as never before: his self-created ethnic, vocoder/wordless vocals that sound foreign and familiar; the global, rhythmic counterpoint that erases the boundaries of East and West; the Stravinskian strings and synths and ancient and cutting edge melodies, laced with Zawinul’s silk road synthesized solos, from the exotic and evocative opener “Bimoya” to the plaintive “Peace.”
“The music that Joe selected for the recording gives just a glimpse into a spectacularly colorful life.” Järvi said. “He was not a man of many words, but when asked about some tunes -- take ‘Ice Pick Willy’ for example -- his eyes danced about with a devilish humor that assured you there was a story there. He would only tell that Ice Pick was a gangster friend whose affinity for ice picks eventually landed him in jail permanently. ‘Great Empire’ was Joe’s tribute to Japan, a country and culture he loved, as ‘Sultan’ was a tribute to the Ottoman Empire.‘Good Day’ [a worthy successor to ‘Birdland’] celebrated ‘the vibe’ of a gospel mass. I fondly remember Joe sitting at the piano at his home in Malibu playing ‘Ballad for Two Musicians’ to my wife and I the day before we flew to Australia to get married. He dedicated it to love and happiness.” The CD also includes an engaging and informative eleven-minute documentary video of the making of the album.
To bring together such a far-flung assemblage of open-minded and genre-fluent musicians would have been nearly impossible for most musicians. But Kristjan Järvi is no ordinary musician. He was born in 1972, in Tallin, Estonia, to a family of musicians (his father is the world-renowned conductor Neeme Järvi). The family immigrated to New York in 1980, where he studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music and where his teachers included Nina Sventlanova. He also studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum, conducted by Tatiana Nikolayeva, and with Arie Vardi and Victor Derevyanko in Israel. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Kristjan served as Assistant Conductor to Esa Pekka-Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Principle Conductor/Music Director of the Norrlsland Opera and Symphony Orchestra - Sweden (2000-2004), Tonklunster Orchestra - Vienna (2004-2009), and he currently serves as Artistic Advisor for the Basel Chamber Orchestra. He formed the Absolute Ensemble in 1993, and the group released several CDs, including Absolute Mix (Ccn'c, 2000), Absolution (Enja, 2001) and Habanerawith Paquito D’Rivera(Enja, 2002).
So, in the hands of a young and dynamic conductor, the Absolute Ensemble delivers Absolute Zawinul; a moving and magnificent tribute to a master musician who, literally, left us a world of music. “Joe Zawinul wanted the Absolute Zawinul Project to be his legacy,” Kristjan Järvi says. “He was immensely proud of it and talked about the near-finished recording right up until the day he died.”
