Weather Report

Weather Report was an influential jazz fusion band of the 1970s and 1980s, pitting jazz with R&B, funk, and rock elements while still retaining an extremely high level of compositional and improvisational skills. Along with other groups

Weather Report was an influential jazz fusion band of the 1970s and 1980s, pitting jazz with R&B, funk, and rock elements while still retaining an extremely high level of compositional and improvisational skills. Along with other groups that were founded by Miles Davis alumni (Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Headhunters), Weather Report was one of the greatest innovators of the jazz fusion genre at that time. They were also the most long-lived and perhaps the most artistically successful (as cited by Ken Burns) of the four groups.

The band was originally a spin-off from the group of musicians associated with Miles Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The stable core of the group was the duo of pianist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, while the other musicians were rotated, sometimes with almost every new album release. Both Zawinul and Shorter had made their earlier marks as being among the best composers in jazz, Zawinul in Cannonball Adderley's group and Shorter in Miles Davis' group. Zawinul would later join Shorter with Miles Davis' first recordings of fusion music, In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew.