Weather Report’s biggest commercial success came from "Birdland" on their 1977 album “Heavy Weather” and is one of the most recognisable jazz pieces of the 1970s, being additionally recorded by The Manhattan Transfer, Quincy Jones, Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich.
Josef Erich Zawinul (1932–2007) was an Austrian jazz composer and keyboard player that grew up in Vienna. He first came to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and went on to play with Miles Davis, becoming one of the creators of jazz fusion, a new musical genre that combined jazz with rock. He co-founded the group Weather Report with Wayne Shorter, where he pioneered the use of electric piano and synthesiser. At an early age, the accordion was his first instrument, he later went on to study the clarinet, violin and piano at the Vienna Konservatorium. In 1959 he moved to the USA to attend Berklee College of Music, but a week later he received a job offer from Maynard Ferguson, so he left college and went on tour. He spent most of the 1960s with Cannonball Adderley, during which time he wrote "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”, “Walk Tall", and "Country Preacher”. At the end of the decade he recorded with Miles Davis on “In a Silent Way” as Davis was starting to experiment with jazz fusion. Weather Report’s biggest commercial success came from "Birdland" on their 1977 album “Heavy Weather” and is one of the most recognisable jazz pieces of the 1970s, being additionally recorded by The Manhattan Transfer, Quincy Jones, Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich. It was written as a tribute to the Birdland nightclub in New York City and was also named in honour of the man after whom the club was named, Charlie Parker, the 'Bird' himself. The song won him three Grammys. Zawinul also wrote a symphony, called Stories of the Danube, which was commissioned by the Brucknerhaus for the opening of the 1993 Bruckner Festival in Linz.
