Jazz pianist and composer Dieter Glawischnig dies at 88

Jazz pianist, composer and university lecturer Dieter Glawischnig has died at 88, ORF reports. The Graz-born musician died on October 1.

Glawischnig co-founded the Jazz Institute in Graz and led the North German Broadcasting Corporation’s NDR Bigband in Hamburg for decades. NDR director Hendrik Lünenborg said in a tribute that Glawischnig had left a lasting mark on the band, combining the highest artistic standards with humanity and a fine sense of humour.

Glawischnig was born in Graz on March 7, 1938. He began playing the accordion at five, switched to piano a year later and took up the trumpet at 13. He studied musicology, art history and philosophy at the University of Graz, earning his doctorate in 1964, and later studied piano, trumpet and trombone at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.

He helped shape the history of free jazz in Styria. In 2024, when he received the state’s Andrzej Dobrowolski Composition Prize, he recalled that his group had started with free improvisation and was an outsider at university concerts.