Joe Viera was never a man of flowery words. Always to the point, with bone-dry humour, that’s his style. Whether in conversation or in his legendary announcements at the Burghausen Jazz Week. As is well known, he founded this festival, which quickly became the first European category, together with Helmut Viertl in 1970, after a legendary conversation in his VW Beetle. Since then, Viera has managed it until the forced Corona break. Which probably makes him the world record holder in the category of uninterrupted festival management.
Of course, the jazz courses that were installed two years later are at least as important – also to him himself. At a time when it was not yet possible to study jazz in Germany, these workshops became the nucleus of countless jazz initiatives and careers. Guitarists like Helmut Nieberle and Helmut Kagerer, bassists like Thomas Stabenow or Dieter Ilg, drummers like Guido May, horns by Roman Schwaller, Peter Weniger or Claus Reichstaller – all of whom later became directors of the Jazz Institute – through to Julian Wasserfuhr or the Burghausen native Richard Köster, they all went through this school. Together with more than 13 000 participants so far. If you add the “Jazz Series” with groundbreaking teaching works, the academic pioneering work at the Duisburg University of Applied Sciences and at the Hanover Music Academy, later in Munich and Passau, the founding and management of the Bavarian Big Band, the Munich University Big Band, the Union of Germans Jazz musicians like the International Jazz Federation, then one can state: Joe Viera is the German jazz professor, a role that puts the saxophonist, arranger and festival organizer in the shade.
This calling was not in his cradle. Born in Munich in 1932 and living there ever since, Viera first studied physics after the war and after graduating from high school. He also did his diploma, but by then jazz had already overpowered his life. This duality certainly shaped him, as he once emphasized: “I learned how to think from physics and how to feel from music.” As a child he had learned to play the recorder and piano in a very classical way, but early on he was fascinated by the non-classical, offbeat sounds and rhythms that he heard as a boy on secretly circulating shellac records and the forbidden “enemy radio stations”. During the 72 bombing raids on Munich, which he witnessed, they became a “means of survival”. And finally, after the physics intermezzo, to his job.
He took his first steps with Dixieland
Using all her financial means, Viera bought a soprano saxophone from a friend and immediately formed a band. The alto was quickly added, later he switched to tenor. He took the first steps with Dixieland, with his own Riverboat Seven like the hot dog. But his musical horizons quickly expanded, and from the early 1960s the range of modern styles from bebop to free jazz increased in line with the growth of his bands. From a duo with the pianist Erich Ferstl to a trio with the bassist and later ECM founder Manfred Eicher and a quartet to the sextet of the late 1970s, which is also documented on LP.
Curiosity and openness were also the basis of his role as a jazz mediator, which increasingly came to the fore. He was not only able to inspire countless musicians with it, but also the Burghausen audience, to whom he always wanted to bring all facets of jazz closer – even in the days of the jazz police. You can see this not least from the illustrious names on the bronze plates of Burghausen’s “Street of Fame” – since last year there has also been one dedicated to him directly in front of the entrance to the jazz cellar. Viera stayed away from the transfer ceremony, with a usual dry greeting, which also spoke of the disappointment that the departure as director of the jazz week and jazz courses was not entirely voluntary. Because retreating and stepping back is not his thing, not even at the age of 90. He can celebrate this milestone birthday along with an impressive life’s work on September 4th, and the underpass organizes an evening for him on September 19th. With the Uni Big Band, which he will of course lead. As for 25 years.