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Josef Erich Zawinul (July 7, 1932 – September 11, 2007) was a jazz keyboardist and composer. First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with elements of rock and world music. Later, Zawinul co-founded the groups Weather Report and the world fusion music oriented Zawinul Syndicate. Additionally, he made pioneering use of electric piano and synthesizers. Zawinul won the "Best Keyboardist" award 30 times from American jazz magazine Down Beat's critics' poll. Several artists have honored Zawinul with songs, notably Brian Eno's instrumental "Zawinul/Lava", John McLaughlin's instrumental "Jozy", Warren Cuccurullo's "Hey Zawinul" and Biréli Lagrène's instrumental "Josef".

Zawinul's playing style is often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations - both bebop, ethnic and pop sounding - combined with sparse but rhythmic playing of big-band sounding chords or bass lines. In Weather Report, he often employed a vocoder as well as pre-recorded sounds played (i.e filtered and transposed) trough a synthesizer, creating a very distinctive, often beautiful, synthesis of jazz harmonics and "noise" ("using all the sounds the world generates"). Many considered Zawinul as the "best" synthesizer player "in jazz", frequently employing over 10 keyboards with live settings of his bands.

Zawinul was born and grew up in Landstraße, in Vienna, Austria, where he went to school with the late former Austrian Federal President Thomas Klestil. His grandmother was a Sinti ("Gypsy"). Classically trained at the Vienna Conservatoire, Zawinul played in various broadcasting and studio bands before emigrating to the U.S. in 1959 on a music scholarship at Berklee College of Music. Josef was already so good that his teacher at Berklee said something to the effect that "there is nothing you can learn here", go out and start playing professionally. He played with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, where he first met Wayne Shorter after Zawinul had an influence in hiring him. Shorter left soon thereafter to play in Art Blakey's group and Josef was apparently dismissed from the Ferguson band for wanting to have too much control over personnel decisions. Zawinul after that toured and recorded with singer Dinah Washington for two years. In 1961, Zawinul joined the Quintet led by saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. During his nine-year stint with Adderley, Zawinul wrote the hit song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." He also composed "Walk Tall" and "Country Preacher," the latter a tribute to U.S. Civil Rights Movement leader Jesse Jackson. In this title cut to the quintet's popular 1969 album, Country Preacher, Austrian-born Zawinul demonstrated a sophisticated and intimate understanding of the African/Black concept of cool, of motion and interval. When "Country Preacher" debuted at a live recording session in Chicago at Jackson's Operation Breadbasket, it elicited enthusiastic cheers of immediate recognition from the mostly Black audience. In the late 1960s, Zawinul recorded with Miles Davis's studio band and helped create the sound of jazz fusion. Among others, he played on the album In a Silent Way, the title track of which he composed, and the landmark album Bitches Brew, for which he contributed the twenty-minute track, "Pharaoh's Dance", which occupied the whole of side one. Zawinul is known to have played live with Davis only once, on July 10, 1991, shortly before Davis' death. Zawinul, along with other Davis sidemen Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, was one of the first to use electric pianos and early synthesizers like the ARP 2600 in 1973's Sweetnighter. He was among the first to use a Fender-Rhodes with a Phasing effect and a Wah-Wah pedal. His creativity and attention to detail resulted in a very contemporary and modern sound. He also has played the kalimba on Weather Report's Mysterious Traveller and Mr. Gone.

In 1970, Zawinul co-founded Weather Report with saxophonist and Davis alumnus Wayne Shorter. Their first two years emphasized a relatively open, group improvisation format not dissimilar to what Miles Davis was doing in a more rock oriented format. However, Josef started making changes with their third album, Sweetnighter, citing he was "tired of waiting for something to happen". Funk elements such as electric bass, wah-wah pedal, etc. started to be introduced in the band's sound. Music critics generally agree that their 4th album, Mysterious Traveller, was their true breakthrough album, capturing the classic Weather Report "sound" for the first time. The musical forms were now through composed similar to classical music, and the combination of jazz harmonies with 70's groove elements launched the band into its most successful period. Their biggest commercial success came from his composition "Birdland", a 6-minute opus featured on Weather Report's 1977 album Heavy Weather, which peaked at number 30 on the Billboard pop albums chart. "Birdland" is one of the most recognizable jazz pieces of the 1970s, covered by many prominent artists from The Manhattan Transfer and Quincy Jones to Maynard Ferguson and Jefferson Starship. Even Weather Report's version received significant mainstream radio airplay — unusual for them — and served to convert many new fans to music which they may never have heard otherwise. The song won him three Grammys. Weather Report was active until the mid 80s, with Zawinul and Shorter remaining the sole constant members through multiple personnel shifts. The group was notable for bringing to prominence pioneering fretless bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius, but also other musicians, such as Alphonso Johnson and Peter Erskine. Shorter and Zawinul had already gone separate ways, after the recording of their "final" Sportin' Life, when it was discovered that they had to do one more album in order to fulfill the CBS contract. This is This! therefore became their final album. Shorter participated despite being busy leading his own group, and Peter Erskine was also brought in again for this record, ending up playing on most compositions.

Zawinul also wrote a Symphony, called Stories of the Danube, which was commissioned by the Brucknerhaus, at Linz. It was first performed as part of the Linzer Donauklangwolke (a large-scale open-air broadcast event), for the opening of the 1993 Bruckner Festival. In its seven movements, the symphony traces the course of the Danube from Donaueschingen through various countries ending at the Black Sea. It was recorded in 1995 by the Czech State Philharmonic Orchestra, Brno, conducted by Caspar Richter. Zawinul was hospitalized in his native Vienna on August 7, 2007, only one week after concluding a six-week European tour. He died from a rare form of skin cancer (Merkel Cell Carcinoma) on September 11, 2007.