Hermann Szobel - Szobel

Facts Let's assume this lost jazz-fusion masterpiece would have never seen the light of the day if Vienna-born Hermann Szobel weren't the nephew of concert promoter Bill Graham. That stipulated, the album is a mind-bending scorcher by any standard: a deliriously virtuosic collection of zig-zagging Zappa-esque melodies and moody emotional plunges performed by an obscure quintet temporarily channeling the authority of Weather Report. Its 18-year-old pianist-bandleader, however, didn't stick around to record a follow-up. Likely suffering from mental illness, Szobel disappeared from the music world; his mother filed a missing-person report for him in 2002, noting that he enjoyed dogs and hashish. In 2015, however, Szobel reappeared in the documentary Looking for Jesus, for which he allowed director Katarzyna Kozyra to record (but not film) him on the street in Jerusalem, where he lived as an apparently homeless artist.
RollingStone