Radio.String.Quartet.Vienna - Posting Joe (2013)

“I’ve shaken his hand once, so I guess you can’t call it a closer acquaintance.” A typically Viennese answer by Bernie Mallinger, the violinist and head of radio.string.quartet.vienna (r.s.q.v.), to the question about his personal relationship to Joe Zawinul. Nonetheless, the music of his Austrian colleague has been omnipresent for him and the other members of the string quartet. It could hardly be otherwise, Zawinul is one of the most significant personalities of jazz: the style-forming pianist of the hard bop era with “Cannonball” Adderley, a pioneer of fusion on Miles Davis’ groundbreaking recordings “In A Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew”, with his own band “Weather Report”, founded together with Wayne Shorter, and finally with “Syndicate”, a combination of jazz and world music.