Joe Zawinul will make a live guest appearance at the SKY Media Loft on Monday, May 31, 2004. Don’t miss this chance to experience one of the greatest jazz musicians of our time up close and personal!

As the grand finale of their Spring Tour 2004, Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate will be performing on the LinzFest’s main stage in the Donaupark at 8:30 PM. Immediately after the gig, Joe Zawinul will be dropping by at 10:30 PM at the SKY Media Loft to chat with fans and talk about his life as a jazz legend.

Joe Zawinul was born in Vienna in 1932. Displaying extraordinary talent even as a child, he received a scholarship to the Vienna Conservatory. After making a name for himself as a pianist and working with such top artists as Friedrich Gulda, Hans Koller and Oscar Klein, he left Austria and headed for the US in 1959. He quickly hooked up with musical greats like Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, and his first album entitled “To You with Love” appeared that same year. What followed was a remarkable musical career that has included six Grammies, seven Golden Trophies for album of the year in Japan, a wide array of awards for his life’s work, and, in 1991, an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

One of the more spectacular highlights of his career was his first international hit—“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!” took the pop charts by storm and made it to Number 11 on the Billboard Top 100. The 1969 ballad “In a Silent Way” marked the jazzman’s shift in the direction of fusion and crossover. After a period of collaboration with Miles Davis, Zawinul founded his first band, “Weather Report,” for whom he wrote his best-know composition, “Birdland.” In 1987, he founded the Zawinul Syndicate, which he’ll be fronting in Linz.

Joe Zawinul, a man who has worked with all of the world’s top-name jazz musicians, recently opened his own jazz club in Vienna—“Joe Zawinul’s Birdland.” The name pays homage to New York’s legendary “Birdland,” a jazz venue that Joe Zawinul calls the most important place in his life. This is where he got to know all-time jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, and he met his wife there too. Joe Zawinul wanted his Viennese “Birdland” to have a similar atmosphere, to offer world-class music, and to be a meeting place for prominent international guests but one that was accessible to “the man on the street” too. The opening act: “Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate,” who will be appearing until May 30, 2004.