Weather report band members
Weather Report
American jazz fusion band
This article is about the band. For other uses, see Weather report (disambiguation).
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded in 1970 by Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, American drummer Alphonse Mouzon as well as American percussionists Don Alias and Barbara Burton. The band was initially co-led by Zawinul and Shorter but as the 1970s progressed, Zawinul became the primary composer and creative director of the group. Other prominent members throughout the band’s history included bassists Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson and Victor Bailey, drummers Chester Thompson and Peter Erskine, and percussionists Airto Moreira and Alex Acuña. A quintet of Zawinul & Shorter with a bassist, a drummer and a percussionist was the standard formation for Weather Report.
The band started as a free improvising group with avant-garde and experimental electronic leanings (pioneered by Zawinul); when Vitouš left Weather Report (due mostly to creative disagreements), Zawinul increasingly steered the band towards a funky, edgy sound incorporating elements of R&B and native musics from around the world. Zawinul used the latest developments in synthesizer technology, and he took advantage of a large variety of sounds and tone colors to make the band stand out. During the first half of their career, Weather Report were seen as one of the defining acts in modern jazz, winning the DownBeat "best album award" five times in a row.
Alongside bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (all with members inspired by and partially responsible for the fusion-era work of Miles Davis), Weather Report is widely considered one of the defining bands of the jazz fusion genre.
Musical style
Over their 16-year career, Weather Report explored various types of music, predominantly They might be best know to the casual listener for their jazz-rock hit ‘Birdland‘, but in this article we’re going to dive deeper into perhaps the most influential jazz fusion band of all time: Weather Report. Co-founded by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist player Wayne Shorter, the Weather Report band was pioneering in its scintillating fusion of styles, that whilst leaning heavily into jazz, also incorporated elements of funk, rock and electronic music into its every evolving sound. We’ve picked out ten albums by these masters of fusion that form the essential Weather Report listening! Weather Report’s 1974 recording ‘Mysterious Traveller’ is their fourth studio album, and the last to feature founding member, double bassist Miroslav Vitous. A signifier of the direction in which the band was heading, ‘Mysterious Traveller’ was the first Weather Report record to primarily makes use of the electric bass, and also incorporates elements of funk, R&B and rock, all of which would go on to become key elements of the band’s sound. Highlights include the ferocious and joyful ‘Nubian Sundance’ (including synthesised crowd noises) and the contrasting stillness of ‘Blackthorn Rose’. Voted as 1974’s album of the year by readers of Downbeat magazine, this is undoubtedly one of Weather Report’s finest records. Weather Report’s debut album channels the spirit of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way period (indeed, it features two alumni of Davis’ band in Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter), with atmospheric sounds and floating dreamlike textures present throughout. Joe Zawinul draws warm tones from his Rhodes electric piano, and makes use of a ring modulator to create interesting synthesized effects, whilst Shorter’s soprano sax cuts brilliantly through the rhythm section of Miroslav Vitous, Alphonse Mouzon and Airto Moreria. Check out Shorter’s exquisite ‘Tears’ and Zawinul’s ‘Waterf The "classic" lineup of Weather Report from the late 1970's. Clockwise from the left: Josef "Joe" Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, John "Jaco" Pastorius, Peter Erskine Weather Report was a jazz fusion band, formed by the only two consistent members, keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, in 1970. The rest of the lineup was a Revolving Door Band, but several of the members are well-known on their own, most notably world-class bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius. In the beginning, they played Miles Davis - inspired free jazz (Shorter and Zawinul had both played on Davis' albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew), and gained attention for Zawinul's innovative use of synthesizers (he was one of the first to use the instrument in jazz) and influences from everything from bebop to world music. They soon moved into a sound more oriented around funk, and shifted away from improvisations into a more melodic and thought-out compositional style, mostly dominated by Zawinul.Their greatest success came with the arrival of Jaco Pastorius in 1976, and the album Heavy Weather, which reached #1 on Billboard's jazz charts and provided their Signature Song, "Birdland". This also signalled their shift into a more rock-oriented and commercial style, which made them one of the leading jazz bands in the world. Unfortunately, Zawinul was developing increasing Control Freak tendencies, composing everything on his synthesizers and dictating their musical direction completely. Friction rose within the band, and Pastorius left in 1982. The band continued a while longer to diminishing returns, until the band members felt that they had more freedom in their own projects, and Shorter's increasing distance from the band led Zawinul to split them up in 1986. Pastorius died in 1987; Zawinul himself passed away in 2007. Another former bassist, Victor Bailey, died in 2016. Wayne Shorter died on March 2, 2023. Co-founded by Miles Davis alumnae Wayne Shorter and Josef Zawinul, Weather Report forged a new direction in instrumental music with an exhilarating hybrid of styles that drew heavily on jazz while also incorporating elements of rock, funk, free flowing group improvisation, electronic abstraction and pan-global exotica. A perennial poll-winner, the group reached enormous peaks of worldwide popularity while also establishing itself as one of the most vitally creative and influential units to come out of the volatile 1970s. A series of key, interconnected events led to the ultimate formation of Weather Report in the early part of December, 1970. Indeed, it was a musical concept that gestated over time during the late ’60s through various recordings before finally manifesting as the super group that would become indisputably the premier fusion band of the 1970s and 1980s. Zawinul hinted at this forward-thinking, harmonically open direction as early as 1967 in his capacity as keyboardist for the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. Two other key recordings, both released in that pivotal year of 1970, were important precursors to Weather Report. Zawinul, the keyboardist composer's third and most ambitious album as a leader for Atlantic, marks a decided stride into the new, and away from the soul-jazz and hard bop tone of Joe's two previous Atlantic outings, 1966's Money in the Pocket and 1968's The Rise & Fall of the Third Stream. The more progressive-sounding Zawinul features Joe's very personal take on his own evocative composition 'In A Silent Way', which he had originally written to convey his impressions of his days as a shepherd boy in Austria. Also noteworthy is ‘Doctor Honoris Causa', a tune that Joe dedicated to Herbie Hancock and which would later become a regular concert-opener for Weather Report. The bassist on that breakthrough, self-titled project was Miroslav Vitous, the gifted Czech music Mysterious Traveller
Weather Report (1971)
Discography
Weather Report: the life and times of the group on record