Dieter Glawischnig

Dieter Glawischnig was born in Graz, Austria, on 7 March 1938. Kurier reports that he started on accordion at five, moved to piano, which remained his favourite instrument, a year later, and took up trumpet at 13. He enjoyed telling people that as a teenager he ran 100 metres in eleven seconds without any training. His first contact with jazz came through the British forces stationed in Graz after the Second World War, which helped a lively jazz scene grow in Styria.

He studied musicology, art history and philosophy at the University of Graz and completed a doctorate in 1964 with a dissertation on the Graz composer Anselm Huettenbrenner. At the Graz Academy of Music and Performing Arts he then studied piano, trumpet and trombone and also trained in conducting, earning diplomas as a pianist and conductor. In 1970 he spent a sabbatical semester at Berklee in Boston, taking Herb Pomeroy's arranging course. He later described Pomeroy as his only real teacher.

Glawischnig led his own groups from 1956 and worked as a freelance trombonist with the Austrian radio orchestra and as a repetiteur at the Graz Opera. In 1965 he co-founded the jazz institute at the Graz music academy and led its jazz department from 1968 to 1975. In 1969 he co-founded the International Society for Jazz Research and helped organise its first jazz research conference.

In 1974 he formed the trio Neighbours with bassist Ewald Oberleitner and drummer John Preininger, playing what Oe1 called motivically and formally bound free jazz. The trio recorded and toured with Anthony Braxton and Fred Anderson and also worked with Karl Berger, Gerd Dudek, Albert Mangelsdorff and John Surman.

NDR editor Wolfgang Kunert brought him to Hamburg in 1973 to lead the NDR studio band. In 1980 he became chief conductor of the NDR Bigband, a post he held until 2008. With Kunert he transformed the former dance and entertainment orchestra into a modern soloists' big band that worked with Joe Pass, Chet Baker, Al Jarreau, McCoy Tyner and Abdullah Ibrahim and toured Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City, Chicago and New York. From 1982 to 2003 he was a professor at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, where he helped build the jazz programme.

Glawischnig was married to Tamara, and after leaving the NDR Bigband in 2008 the couple moved back to Graz. His son Hans Glawischnig is a jazz bassist who made his name on the New York scene, and the two sometimes performed together. The Graz arts university's obituary also names music therapy professor Monika Glawischnig-Goschnik as part of his family. Colleagues remembered him as combative and kind, with Austrian wit (Schmäh) and a habit of handing out reading tips.

Glawischnig cared about treating text and music as equals. Rather than the loose side-by-side of poetry readings with jazz backing, he wanted the speaker to act as a soloist on the same footing as the improvising players. He was drawn throughout his life to freer forms of jazz. NDR recalls that when the studio band had to accompany the schlager singer Heino on television, he wore a button reading "Heino? Nein Danke".

He is credited with helping establish jazz as an academic subject in both Graz and Hamburg and with turning the NDR Bigband into one of Europe's leading jazz orchestras. NDR director general Hendrik Luenenborg called him an extraordinary musician, teacher and trailblazer. Oe1's Andreas Felber described him as a versatile artist and open mind whose work will echo for a long time inside and outside Austria. The City of Graz said his work shaped generations of musicians.

Joseph Marx Music Prize of the State of Styria (1984, with the trio Neighbours). Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class (1993). Grand Gold Decoration of the State of Styria (2014). Andrzej Dobrowolski Composition Prize of the State of Styria (2024). Honorary member of the International Society for Jazz Research.

Selected recordings: Neighbours Live (1975); Great Neighbours Music (1979); recordings of Neighbours with Anthony Braxton; Ernst Jandl with Dieter Glawischnig and the NDR Bigband, laut und luise / aus der kuerze des lebens (1995, double CD); Guenter Lenz, Strict Minimum (2007); Sound Is (Klopotec, 2022) with Alipio Carvalho Neto, Ewald Oberleitner and Gal Furlan. Works include "aus der kuerze des lebens" (1989) and "Als die Synagogen brannten" on texts by Gunter Falk.

Glawischnig died on 1 October 2026 in a hospital in Graz at the age of 88, his family announced. NDR and the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz made the news public on 14 October 2026, followed by tributes from Oe1, BR-Klassik, the City of Graz and the Frankfurter Allgemeine. NDR Kultur broadcast a tribute on 16 October 2026. The cause of death has not been made public.