Music Of Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous

Music Of Weather Report
Release date: 10.06.2016ECM 2364
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The great Czech bassist returns once more to the music of Weather Report, the group he co-founded with Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter in 1970. It’s the improvisational freedom of the early Weather Report that most interests Vitous, and he abides by their old rallying call “everyone solos and no one solos”. Well-known Report repertoire re-explored includes “Birdland”, “Seventh Arrow”, “Scarlet Woman”, “Pinocchio” and “Morning Lake” and Miroslav’s group also plays “Juggler’s Issue” a piece which the first Weather Report line-up played but didn’t record. Interspersed along the way are three new blues tunes from Vitous’s pen. The band, driven by the astounding double drumming of Gerald Cleaver and Nasheet Waits, is energetic and daring, juxtaposing fast tempos and rhythmically free pulses, with Miroslav’s arco bass playing sometimes sounding like a third horn in between the two saxophones.
Der tschechische Bassist widmet sich einmal mehr der Musik von Weather Report – der Band, die er gemeinsam mit Joe Zawinul und Wayne Shorter im Jahr 1970 gründete. Dabei interessiert Vitous in erster Linie die improvisatorische Freiheit des frühen Weather Report, ein Grund weshalb er an dem alten Schlachtruf von Weather Report  „Jeder und niemand soliert“ festhält. Altbekanntes  Repertoire wie “Birdland”, “Seventh Arrow”, “Scarlet Woman”, “Pinocchio” und “Morning Lake” wird hier wiederbelebt,  genauso wird jedoch mit “Juggler’s Issue” auch ein Stück wiederentdeckt, dass die erste Weather Report-Besetzung zwar live spielte, aber nie aufgenommen hat. Darüber hinaus beinhaltet das Album auch drei neue Blues-Kompositionen aus der Feder von Vitous. Angetrieben von der doppelten Schlagzeugbesetzung aus Gerald Cleaver und Nasheet Waits klingt die Band energetisch und frech und stellt schnelle Tempi freien Rhythmen gegenüber. Miroslavs Basspiel mutet vor diesem Hintergrund beinahe wie ein drittes Horn zwischen den beiden Saxophonen an.
Featured Artists
  • Miroslav VitousDouble Bass, Keyboards
  • Gary CampbellSoprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone
  • Roberto BonisoloSoprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone
  • Aydin EsenKeyboards
  • Gerald CleaverDrums
  • Nasheet WaitsDrums
Recorded

2010-2011, Universal Syncopations Studios, Clavesana

Bassist Miroslav Vitous returns once more to the music of the band he co-founded at the beginning of the 1970s, re-evoking and expanding upon the highly improvisational methodology of the original Weather Report. On his earlier album Remembering Weather Report, he addressed the spirit of the old band; this time he directly addresses its repertoire.
 
Throughout the album Vitous leads an exceptional group, driven by two of contemporary jazz’s most creative drummers, Gerald Cleaver and Nasheet Waits, and it is intriguing to hear the ensemble turned loose on some of Weather Report’s best-known tunes, among them Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland”. Miroslav’s “Birdland Variations” reorders its sequence of themes and sets it free, rhythmically. As he explains, “One drummer plays in a 3/4 time feel while the other plays in 4/4 or free time. The combination creates a kind of tunnel, where one can play any phrase in any tempo, and it swings amazingly.” Vitous’s distinctive arco bass playing is often at the forefront of the music, offering “a hornlike lead” alongside the saxophones of Gary Campbell and Roberto Bonisolo.
 
“Scarlet Woman” takes Zawinul’s core melody and “extends, expands and harmonizes it in new ways. We kept the original form by repeating the original melody, and this modulates into a sort of bridge in F major, which opens the piece like coming through the mountains into a beautiful valley.”
 
Wayne Shorter’s tune “Pinocchio” appeared on Miles Davis’s 1967 recording Nefertiti and was revived for Weather Report’s 1978 album Mr Gone. Miroslav describes his new group’s approach to this much-played tune as “quite theatrical” and praises Turkish pianist Aydin Esen’s re-harmonization of the theme, after which “everyone solos and no one solos”, this being the characteristic hallmark of Weather Report’s spontaneous arranging-in-the-moment. “But there is more free expression in the music now than there was back then,” claims Miroslav.
 
Two of Vitous’s tunes from Weather Report’s debut album – “Seventh Arrow” and “Morning Lake” – are reprised here. “Seventh Arrow”, always a powerful piece, makes telling use of the independently-minded drummers. After an early climax, “it keeps floating with a typical Weather Report-like groove”, says the composer, who suggests that the “oriental motifs” which emerge here may be memories of WR’s famous Japanese trip (refer to Weather Report’s Live In Tokyo album of 1972). “Morning Lake” is a much-recorded impressionistic piece: a 1981 trio version with Terje Rypdal and Jack DeJohnette can be heard on the ECM album To Be Continued, and a variation for solo bass, “Morning Lake For Ever” on Miroslav’s Emergence. The present version concludes with a storm recorded in real time. “It was as if we called it to come with the music.”
 
Threaded between the Weather Report pieces are short compositions of atmospheric blues: “The main attraction here is the combination of the two tandems. For instance, saxophone and one drummer will be playing at fast tempo while me and the second drummer play in almost half-time shuffle feel. But the tempos are not mathematically even. They are like two different dimensions…or like two planets next to each other, or two galaxies or universes pulling and affecting each other.”

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