75 (album)

Overview

With the exception of one track, 75 was recorded during the Zawinul Syndicate's 7 July 2007 appearance at a festival in Lugano, Switzerland, which happened to be bandleader Joe Zawinul's seventy-fifth birthday. The concert was a part of the Zawinul Syndicate's twentieth anniversary world tour. The remaining track, "In a Silent Way", was recorded from their 2 August 2007 show in Veszprém, Hungary. Zawinul was joined on stage by Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone for this track. This marked a reunion for Zawinul and Shorter, two original members of Weather Report, both of whom played on the original version of this song from Miles Davis's 1969 album of the same name. Shortly after these performances, on 11 September 2007, Zawinul died of Merkel cell carcinoma. The Veszprém concert was Zawinul's penultimate performance.

Composition

75 opens with "Orient Express" from Zawinul's 1992 solo album My People. Zawinul plays the vocoder on this track. The second track, "Madagascar", also features Zawinul on vocoder and is one of two tracks that originally appeared on Weather Report's album Night Passage. Another Weather Report piece, "Scarlet Woman", follows and features a bass solo by Linley Marthe. "Zansa II" is a duet with Paco Sery on kalimba and Zawinul on synthesizer and vocoder. The first disc concludes with "Cafe Andalusia". Sabine Kabongo provides scat vocals on this track.

A combination of two Weather Report pieces "Fast City" and "Two Lines" opens disc two and features more scat singing by Kabongo. Next, "Clario" features vocals by Alegre Corrêa. Another melding of Weather Report tunes, "Badia" and "Boogie Woogie Waltz", follows and features Corrêa on Berimbau and Kabongo on vocals. The next track is a recording of Kabungo leading the audience in a chorus of "Happy Birthday" directed at Zawinul. "In a Silent Way", a duet between Shorter and Zawinul originally from Miles Davis's album of the same name, follows. The album closed with "Hymn", which seemed to one reviewer "as though [Zawinul] knew the end was near".

Critical reception

75 received a generally positive critical reception. Michael G. Nastos of Allmusic wrote that the album exemplified Zawinul's "personalized direction" before he died and that it "exudes all of the energy the group produced in concert". JazzTimes's Bill Milkowski described Zawinul's keyboard playing as creating "dazzling, free-flowing lines with the right hand while deftly orchestrating dense chords and Ellingtonian shout choruses with the left hand". All About Jazz's Woodrow Wilkins called the album a "musical adventure" and Zawinul's performance "a testament to his talent and dedication in sharing his gift". John Kelman, managing editor for All About Jazz, wrote that based on his performance Zawinul gave "no indicators that he was ill, let alone approaching death". He closed his review by calling 75 a "fitting finale to the career of an artist whose creativity, forward thinking and extensive discography mean that he may be gone, but he'll never be forgotten." In the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bob Karlovitis called the release "a great statement about [Zawinul's] creativity". He described the album's opening piece, "Orient Express" as "almost tiring in its energy".

The BBC's Jon Lusk did not share the high opinions of other critics. He was "not mad about" vocalists Aziz Sahmaoui and Sabine Kabongo but found Alegre Corrêa "agreeable enough". He liked "In a Silent Way", calling it "beautifully serene" but wished there were other performances with similar "reflective moments". The review in The Times by John Bungey was more positive. He noted that it was not a "generally sad affair, hard-to-take document" as are most final recordings of great artists, but instead "a compelling last testament of a mighty group and a fine human being". Nick Coleman's review in The Independent was mixed; he wrote that the "tempos border on the frantic, phrases are spat, the will to trade licks is never less than testosteronal" but quipped that for "every sublime passage there's a butch one". John Fordham of The Guardian contrasted the release to Zawinul's 2005 live album Vienna Nights. One difference he emphasized was "the typhoon drumming of Paco Sery and a battalion of percussionists [that] gives Zawinul the option of letting long stretches of the music simply groove". He also noted that there was no comparable track with the duet with Shorter on Vienna Nights.

Credits

Credits adapted from Allmusic and album liner notes.

Charts

75 reached a peak position of number eighteen on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart.

Awards

The album won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. The other nominees for the award were Urbanus by Stefon Harris, Sounding Point by Julian Lage, At World's Edge by Philippe Saisse, and Big Neighborhood by Mike Stern.