The story is legendary: In September 1969, the jazz musician and fan Helmut Viertl, whose civilian job as a bailiff had brought him to Burghausen a few years earlier, invited the Munich saxophonist and jazz lecturer Joe Viera to give a lecture in his school, which had only been founded the year before small Burghausen jazz club “Birdland” was invited. The presentation on “Jazz in Film”, already scheduled without the concert that Viera had planned, turned into a disaster.
Only a handful of people showed up, then the projector went on strike, and finally Viera was detained in the hotel the next morning because no one had paid for his room and he “didn’t have enough money with him,” as he later reported. “Never again Burghausen,” he thought when Viertl picked him up and drove him to the train station. The planned train had of course long since left, so we sat in Viertl’s VW Beetle at this “toilet with a stop”, as Viertl called the train station, which is still not particularly frequented and hospitable, started talking, told each other’s life stories – and planned “something Big.”
In fact, just six months later, from March 3rd to 8th, 1970, the two of them organized the first “Jazz Week Burghausen” with four concerts, a lecture and a discussion event. The BR already recorded the final evening with the then famous Austrian trumpeter Oscar Klein. The thing took off, grew quickly, and, since there were hardly any jazz festivals in Europe, it soon attracted all the international stars and became the most important Bavarian institution of its kind and far beyond. Joe Viera officially directed the festival until 2022, for more than a record-breaking 40 years. As a farewell, he received the 52nd bronze plate in the “Street of Fame” in front of the Mautnerschloss with the jazz cellar, joining the ranks of the great stars who have appeared here, from Count Basie to Esbjörn Svensson.
It was typical that Viera didn’t appear at the transfer ceremony herself, but only sent a gnarly greeting. Not only did he have his very own, bone-dry sense of humor with a strong ability to formulate things, but he was also quite stubborn. And so he was angry with the people of Burghausen that they had taken over the management of not only the festival but also the workshops. These jazz courses, which he began giving in 1972, were at least as important to him as the festival itself. And rightly so, as they were the nucleus of countless jazz initiations and careers. Guitarists like Helmut Nieberle and Helmut Kagerer, bassists like Thomas Stabenow or Dieter Ilg, drummers like Guido May, brass players like Roman Schwaller, Peter Weniger or Claus Reichstaller – all of whom later became heads of the jazz institute themselves – all went through Viera’s school.
There are more than 13,000 participants to date, if you add his “Jazz Series” with groundbreaking teaching works, the academic pioneering work at the Duisburg Comprehensive University and at the Hanover University of Music, later in Munich and Passau, and the founding and management of the Big Band Bayern teachers , the University Big Band Munich, the Union of German Jazz Musicians and the International Jazz Federation, then one can state: Joe Viera was the German jazz professor and multiplier, a role that overshadows the saxophonist, arranger and festival organizer.
As a boy, he listened to the secretly circulating shellac records and the forbidden “enemy radio”
This calling was not something he was born with. Born in Munich in 1932 and living there ever since, Viera initially studied physics after the war and high school. He also got his diploma, but by then jazz had already forced its way into his life. Of course, this duality 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 the classic way, but from an early age he was fascinated by the weirder sounds and rhythms that he heard as a boy on secretly circulating shellac records and the forbidden “enemy radio stations”. They became a “means of survival” in the 72 bombing raids on Munich that he witnessed. And finally, after the physics interlude, to his job.
Viera bought a soprano saxophone from a friend at every financial opportunity and immediately founded a band. The alto was quickly added, and later he switched to tenor. He took his first steps with Dixieland, his own Riverboat Seven like the Hot dogs. But his musical horizons quickly expanded, and from the early 1960s the range of modern styles from bebop to free jazz increased parallel to the expansion of his bands. From a duo with the pianist Erich Ferstl, it went through 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 able to inspire not only countless musicians, but also the Burghausen audience, to whom he always wanted to introduce all facets of jazz. He was never into retreating or cutting back – “I don’t have time to quit” was one of his typical sayings. Although he now had difficulty walking, he still celebrated his 90th birthday in style with a concert by his university big band in the Unterfahrt. Certainly against his convictions, Viera died on Saturday night as a result of a fall, five months before his 92nd birthday.