Dieter Glawischnig, Who Led Hamburg's NDR Bigband for 28 Years, Dies at 88

Dieter Glawischnig, the Austrian pianist, composer and conductor who led the NDR Bigband in Hamburg from 1980 to 2008, has died at 88. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), the German public broadcaster that runs the band, announced on Oct. 14 that he died on Oct. 1. The Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung wrote that he "suddenly did not wake up," in JazzLib's translation.

"Under his leadership, the NDR Bigband became one of the leading jazz ensembles in Europe," NDR director general Hendrik Lünenborg said in the broadcaster's statement, in JazzLib's translation. He called Glawischnig "an extraordinary musician, teacher and pioneer."

Glawischnig was born in Graz, Austria, on March 7, 1938. According to NDR, he studied philosophy, musicology and art history, earned diplomas as a pianist and conductor, and in 1965 co-founded in Graz what NDR describes as Europe's first jazz institute, heading its jazz department. In 1970 he spent a sabbatical semester at Berklee in Boston, where he took Herb Pomeroy's arranging course. He later called Pomeroy his "only teacher."

NDR editor Wolfgang Kunert first brought him to Hamburg in 1973, and in 1980 Glawischnig became the band's chief conductor. NDR's tribute describes a gradual transformation. Well into the 1980s, the ensemble, which grew out of the broadcaster's radio dance and light-music orchestra, still recorded jazz-tinged pop for daily programming and played television shows. Glawischnig and Kunert filled open chairs with strong soloists, widened the repertoire and steered the band toward modern jazz. Under his direction it worked with Joe Pass, Chet Baker, Al Jarreau, McCoy Tyner, Abdullah Ibrahim, Maria João and Nils Wogram, and toured to Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City, Chicago and New York, according to NDR.

He also shaped jazz education in Germany. Hamburg's University of Music and Theatre (HfMT) said he was appointed professor of jazz in 1982 and in 1985 founded its jazz degree program, one of the first in the country, with then-president Hermann Rauhe. His model required jazz students to take classical lessons and classical students to learn improvisation, an approach the school says still defines the program. He retired from teaching in 2003.

As a performer, Glawischnig led the trio Neighbours, which the HfMT says made its mark in European free jazz from the 1970s, as well as the group Cercle. For the NDR Bigband he set texts by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl, in the programs Laut und Luise and Aus der Kürze des Lebens, and wrote Als die Synagogen brannten (When the Synagogues Burned), a work remembering the November pogroms of 1938.

After leaving the band in 2008, he returned to Graz with his wife, Tamara. NDR said he kept doing what he had always done, "only with more time: playing and reading." His son is the bassist Hans Glawischnig.