Song 13 ( Weather Report - Birdland )

Most days I choose the song for the day, however some days, like today, the song chose itself. For my 13th pick I am choosing Birdland by Weather Report because I found out yesterday that Joe Zawinul, the leader and mastermind behind Weather Report had died. I was not going to pick this one until a lot later in my list, but I felt that it was necessary today. I tuned in to CNN yesterday and saw his name scrolling on the ticker below and found out. Apparently he died of a rare form of skin cancer at the age of 75 in his native country and city of Vienna, Austria; amazing that so many musical greats came from there.
Zawinul was noted for his work with many of the jazz greats of our time including Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorious, Wayne Shorter, and Cannonball Adderley to name just a very few. I personally only found out about him a few years ago, before that I only heard his work, but did not have a name or a face to go with it. That was until I started looking heavily into Jaco Pastorious' work I found out about this amazing Jazz pianist; I had never before heard synthesizers played along with Jazz. Needless to say Heaven has one of the most incredible Jazz pianists ever, Miles and Jaco are done waiting!

A complete biography on Joe Zawinul can be found here on Wikipedia.

This song is incredible, I fell in love with it immediately. To describe the song, it is a Jazz Fusion instrumental that shows off the virtuosity of every member of the band and is very upbeat. Other than that the song is very hard to describe, it is better to listen to it and make your own conclusions.

Here is the studio version on YouTube.
Here is an excellent live performance on YouTube.

+