In 1970, Mr. Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter founded Weather Report and produced a series of albums including "Heavy Weather," "Black Market," "I Sing the Body Electric," and the Grammy-winning live recording "8:30."
He is credited with bringing the electric piano and synthesizer into the jazz mainstream, but was frustrated by the lack of respect for electric keyboards and new technology among jazz purists.
"There is no difference between a Stradivarius or a beautiful synthesizer sound," Zawinul told Jazziz magazine earlier this year. "People make a big mistake in putting down electronic music. Yes, it's been misused and abused, but that's true of every music. There is nothing wrong with electronic music as long as you're putting some soul behind the technology."
Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer of Austria praised Mr. Zawinul's "unpretentious way of dealing with listeners" and said he was not "blinded by superficialities."
Born in 1932, Mr. Zawinul grew up in a working-class family during World War II in the Austrian capital. He played accordion on the streets to make money and received classical piano training as a child prodigy at the Vienna Conservatory. In the postwar years, he grew interested in American jazz, playing in a dance band that included the future Austrian president Thomas Klestil and making a name for himself on the local jazz scene in bands led by saxophonist Hans Koller and others.
"One thing about Viennese musicians, they can really groove, more than even the German bands can," Mr. Zawinul said in a 2007 Downbeat magazine interview. "It's something in our nature, perhaps. We're cosmopolitan and interracial - Czech, Slavic, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish a little bit."
In 1959, Mr. Zawinul immigrated to the United States on a scholarship to study at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, but left to join Maynard Ferguson's big band. He next landed a gig with Dinah Washington; his funky piano can be heard on her 1959 hit "What a Diff'rence a Day Made."
