The Jazz Legacy Project (JLP) ended its 2026 season with an evening “Weather Report,” detailing the history and music of jazz fusion, the popular music genre that emerged in the late 1960s by combining jazz harmonies and improvisation with rock, funk, and rhythm & blues constructions.
Traditional instruments, including acoustic piano and double bass, were replaced with electric guitars and bass, a Fender Rhodes piano, organs, and synthesizers. Fusion jazz used funk-inspired grooves and rock production techniques with complex time signatures. It retained core jazz components with groove-based vamps or elaborate rock-style arrangements.
Credited with starting this pioneering movement was Miles Davis, whose electric heavy albums, including 1969’s In a Silent Way and followed the next year by Bitches Brew, were followed by several other major artists such as Herbie Hancock, who in 1973 mixed funk and jazz on his album, Head Hunters.
Other Davis-influenced artists of the day included Chick Corea with his fusion band Return to Forever, John McLaughlin and his high-energy Indo-Jazz rock group Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Weather Report, co-founded by Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, with master electric bassist Jaco Pastorius.
JLP drummer and narrator Justin Varnes, with bassist Kevin Smith, saxophonist John Sandfort, and Johan Piece on piano and keyboards, once again thrilled a large audience at Festival Hall in a grand finale for 2026.
The Jazz Legacy Project will resume Feb. 4 next year, when Varnes and his bandmates honor Count Basie – The Professor of Swing – with the full JLP Big Band. For season tickets and more, visit Festival Hall at festivalhall.com.