Infinite surge! Miroslav Vitous, the great bassist and Weather Report founding member, with an extraordinary cast of old friends, musicians who have changed the course of jazz, in an exciting album that is at once timeless and contemporary.When Vitous and producer Manfred Eicher first began discussing this project – Miroslav’s first ECM recording in a decade – one of the conceptual models was the bassist’s very first leader date, 1969’s “Infinite Search”. That historic landmark was long regarded, especially by musicians, as one of the crucial documents of the era. “Universal Syncopations” embodies the spirit of that time without being in any sense nostalgic. The new disc seems to make an ellipsis, continuing where “Infinite Search” left off, picking up the story. The central characters are now mature musicians, yet the purity of the playing remains its most striking characteristic. It retains, thanks to Vitous’s compositions and concept, the freshness of discovery. This is the quality that links the album to an era when music was the only “agenda”, before the speculative dawn of so-called fusion music, to a time when the protagonists were all still in the process of finding their voices.
Universal Syncopations
Miroslav Vitous
- 1Bamboo Forest
04:35 - 2Univoyage
10:48 - 3Tramp Blues
05:15 - 4Faith Run
04:50 - 5Sun Flower
07:16 - 6Miro Bop
03:59 - 7Beethoven
07:13 - 8Medium
05:06 - 9Brazil Waves
04:26
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Bestenliste 1/2004
Jazz Review, Editor’s Choice
Jazz Magazine, Disque d’émoi
Jazzman, Choc de l’année
Jazzman, Choc du mois
Répertoire, Recommandé
Stereoplay, CD des Monats
La Liberté, Coup de cœur
Between 2000 and March this year, Vitous assembled a team of famous players for a single dazzling record project - including Jan Garbarek, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Jack DeJohnette. And the music this quintet of bandleaders produced over the three-year gestation of Universal Syncopations is as big as the idea. ... The opening "Bamboo Forest" is a parade for them all, with Garbarek's silvery soprano sound entering over DeJohnette's chattery Latin pulse and ringing cymbal exclamations, the sax-phrasing growing closer to Wayne Shorter's as the undulations of Corea's piano figures and the elastic snap of Vitous's bass appear around it. McLaughlin's opening phrase is a quote from the late Wes Montgomery's West Coast Blues, as if to announce his intentions to rekindle old fires. On "Univoyage", the ensemble sound borders on free-jazz, but is constantly throttled back to the lazily taut group textures of the mid-1960s Miles band by the contributions of a very selectively deployed brass trio. Garbarek then roundly dispatches all purist gripes that he's a Euro-folkie who can't play "real" jazz with a slyly swinging exploration of Vitous's Tramp's Blues that makes you want to get up and applaud. ... "Sunflower" begins as a brooding drifter, before surging into an urgent bass/drums groove, again eagerly explored by a now deviously dynamic Garbarek, and with Corea's abstract flurries even suggesting Britain's Keith Tippett. But if all this sounds like a jazz-purist's exercise, check the ecstatic funk on "Beethoven", or the dark, ambient murmur of Vitous's majestic bass on the slow "Brazil Waves". This is a wonderful contemporary jazz set with a sense of the past, but in which all the players reconsider their histories to maximise the intensity of the present.
John Fordham, The Guardian
Bassist Miroslav Vitous is back. After a long hiatus from jazz, his latest album Universal Syncopations is a powerful statement that picks up his distinguished career from where he left off eight years ago. … With a dazzling group of sidemen who have all been a part of his musical history, Vitous has created a major statement that could well be one of the critics’ picks of 2003. … While Universal Syncopations is both eloquent and exacting in its inner detail, it never lacks for inspiration. On some tracks Vitous takes the melody on bass, yet the internal dynamics and balance of the overall instrumentation are never upset. Everyone is sure of a personal role and place in shaping this music. Somehow it seems to be a natural extension of the questing brilliance of his 1969 album, Infinite Search. Somehow the past has become the present and present suggests the future as well.
Stuart Nicholson, Jazzwise
In knapp drei Jahrzehnten ... hat sich Miroslav Vitous als einer der wandlungsfähigsten, ausdrucksvollsten und folglich meistgefragten Stilisten auf seinem Instrument etabliert. Auch Pianist Chick Corea, Schlagzeuger Jack DeJohnette, Gitarrist John McLaughlin und Saxofonist Jan Garbarek pflegten in der Vergangenheit zu den verschiedensten Anlässen den Dialog mit dem Bass-Ass. Jetzt brachte ECM-Produzent Manfred Eicher dieses famose Team für eine Aufnahme zusammen, die alles hält, was die illustren Namen versprechen. Die fünf Weltklasse-Solisten, die in drei Titeln durch ein Bläser-Trio verstärkt werden, bewältigen mit verblüffender Leichtigkeit den Spagat zwischen abgeklärtem Spiel und jugendlicher Entdeckungslust. Geschäftsgrundlage ist ein zeitloser, improvisationsfreudiger Jazz, zusammengehalten, natürlich, durch Vitous’ vollendete Kontrabass-Linien und aufgefrischt durch lässige Querverweise in alle Richtungen von Bop bis Free.
Matthias Inhoffen, Stereoplay
Zusammen mit dem Saxophonisten Jan Garbarek bildet das Quintett um Miroslav Vitous etwas, das man früher All-Star-Band genannt hätte: eine Band der Bandleader, von denen jeder ein gewichtiges Kapitel in der neueren Geschichte des Jazz mitgestaltet hat und die allesamt dafür sorgen, Universal Syncopations zu einem Meilenstein des aktuellen Jazz werden zu lassen. Miroslav Vitous ist ein technisch versierter, kontrapunktisch umfassend gebildeter Begleiter und Solist, Improvisator und Komponist, der sich so selbstverständlich in das Prinzip des walking bass fügt, wie er nichts zu wünschen übrig lassende Melodien hervorzubringen vermag. Der Gefahr aber, dass durch zuviel theoretische Kenntnis aus den Stücken Zwitterwesen ohne Originalität werden könnten ... unterliegt die Aufnahme schon deshalb nicht, weil hier Musiker zusammenspielen, die ihr Instrument so perfekt beherrschen, um frei auf die Töne und Ideen der anderen vier reagieren zu können.
Das Ergebnis ist eines jener auch im Jazz seltenen Beispiele von formaler Geschlossenheit und spontaner Klangfindung, von musikalischer Logik in der individuellen Linienführung und einer sinnvollen polyphonen Struktur. ... Bei so manchen, völlig unangestrengt wirkenden Hochgeschwindigkeitspassagen und einigen „Kollektiv“-Improvisationen spürt man, dass eine Einspielung noch immer vom überwältigenden Swing des Schlagzeugers und des Bassisten, dem Erfindungsreichtum in den Improvisationen und der vitalen Offbeat-Phrasierung aller Musiker lebt.
Wolfgang Sandner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Miroslav Vitous, the great bassist and Weather Report founding member, returns with an extraordinary cast of old friends, musicians who have changed the course of jazz, in an album at once timeless and contemporary. When Vitous and producer Manfred Eicher first began discussing this project - Miroslav’s first ECM recording in a decade - one of the conceptual models was the bassist's’s very first leader date, 1969’s “Infinite Search”. That historic landmark, produced by the late Herbie Mann for his Atlantic-distributed Embryo label, featured Vitous, John McLaughlin and Jack DeJohnette - alongside Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock - and was long regarded, especially by musicians, as one of the crucial documents of the era. "Universal Syncopations" embodies the spirit of that time without being in any sense nostalgic. The new disc seems to make an ellipsis, continuing where "Infinite Search" left off, picking up the story. The central characters are now mature musicians, yet the purity of the playing remains its most striking characteristic. It retains, thanks to Vitous's compositions and concept, the freshness of discovery. This is the quality that links the album to an era when music was the only “agenda”, before the speculative dawn of so-called fusion music, to a time when the protagonists were all still in the process of finding their voices. .
There are numerous musical-historical interconnections between the players, all of whom were active in exploring many shades of progressive jazz at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. For instance: Miroslav Vitous, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Jack DeJohnette all played on Wayne Shorter’s epochal “Super Nova”, a session that led to Vitous’s presence in the earliest and, by common critical consensus, most creative edition of Weather Report. Vitous and Corea, still earlier, formed a superlative trio with Roy Haynes whose discography, launched with “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” in 1968, was continued on ECM Recordings in the 1980s ("Trio Music", and "Trio Music Live In Europe"). DeJohnette, McLaughlin and Corea all played with Miles Davis simultaneously, and Vitous also had his fleeting experiences with Miles. Miroslav and Jack, partners on many sessions, played in trio with Terje Rypdal ("Terje Rypdal/Miroslav Vitous/Jack DeJohnnete" and "To Be Continued"). Jan Garbarek and John McLaughlin met for the first time on Zakir Hussain’s “Making Music”. And, of course, Garbarek and Vitous interacted persuasively on “Star” and “Atmos”, ECM albums of the early 90s, and toured together with Peter Erskine. Back then, Miroslav attributed their compatibility to a shared "Slavic soulfulness" - Vitous is Czech, and the Norwegian-born Garbarek is half-Polish - , a way of hearing melody influenced by shared folk roots, but that can only be part of the story. Garbarek frequently soars in collaborations where, relieved of structural concerns, his sole responsibility is to play with that songbird lyricism that's exclusively his. This is true of Jarrett's "Belonging", the “Officium” alliance with the Hilliard Ensemble, Shankar's "Song For Everyone" and Gary Peacock’s “Voice From The Past – Paradigm” (with DeJohnette and Tomasz Stanko), just some of the contexts to which Garbarek has responded with delightful soloistic invention. The work with Miroslav returns him, fairly unambiguously, to jazz, albeit a "universal" jazz, shaped by European and American perspectives. It is enlightening to hear him playing Vitous's rolling "Tramp Blues" or shaping free melodies with an Ornette-like buoyancy on "Bamboo Forest".
Chick Corea, not unlike Miroslav himself, has been a chameleonic player over the years, trying on and discarding a range of musical personalities. The nature of the work with Vitous on "Universal Syncopations" naturally carries echoes of their association in the aforementioned trio with Haynes, but Corea is also adept at providing impulses to the other soloists, and his angular, jabbing rhythm playing recalls the time when he pushed Miles to new ideas, on sessions such as "Filles de Kilimanjaro" and "In A Silent Way".
It was Miroslav Vitous who introduced his countryman Jan Hammer to John McLaughlin, helping, indirectly, to launch the guitarist's Mahavishnu Orchestra, but the McLaughlin heard on "Universal Syncopations" has perhaps more in common with the pre-Mahavisnu player – with flashes of the focussed, exciting improviser of "Extrapolation" (with John Surman and Tony Oxley), and “Emergency” and “Turn It Over” (with Tony Williams’ Lifetime).
Miroslav played on Jack DeJohnette's first album under his own name, "The DeJohnette Complex", vintage 1969. Back then, as now, DeJohnette's drumming was already distinguished by its resourcefulness. There is nothing else in jazz like DeJohnette's elastic beat.
If the settings that Miroslav Vitous has shaped for his colleagues on "Universal Syncopations" - compositions both wide-open and subtle - cast each of them in a new light as old associations are reinvestigated from today's viewpoint, they also provide a superb showcase for the bassist himself. Long one of the truly outstanding bassists in jazz, his command of the instrument is complete. Perhaps more than any jazz bassist since Scott La Faro, he is a musician who has as much to contribute to the “frontline” of an ensemble as to any conventional notion of rhythm section functions, which he also handles authoritatively. He plays the foreground as much as the background - majestically.
There are numerous musical-historical interconnections between the players, all of whom were active in exploring many shades of progressive jazz at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. For instance: Miroslav Vitous, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Jack DeJohnette all played on Wayne Shorter’s epochal “Super Nova”, a session that led to Vitous’s presence in the earliest and, by common critical consensus, most creative edition of Weather Report. Vitous and Corea, still earlier, formed a superlative trio with Roy Haynes whose discography, launched with “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” in 1968, was continued on ECM Recordings in the 1980s ("Trio Music", and "Trio Music Live In Europe"). DeJohnette, McLaughlin and Corea all played with Miles Davis simultaneously, and Vitous also had his fleeting experiences with Miles. Miroslav and Jack, partners on many sessions, played in trio with Terje Rypdal ("Terje Rypdal/Miroslav Vitous/Jack DeJohnnete" and "To Be Continued"). Jan Garbarek and John McLaughlin met for the first time on Zakir Hussain’s “Making Music”. And, of course, Garbarek and Vitous interacted persuasively on “Star” and “Atmos”, ECM albums of the early 90s, and toured together with Peter Erskine. Back then, Miroslav attributed their compatibility to a shared "Slavic soulfulness" - Vitous is Czech, and the Norwegian-born Garbarek is half-Polish - , a way of hearing melody influenced by shared folk roots, but that can only be part of the story. Garbarek frequently soars in collaborations where, relieved of structural concerns, his sole responsibility is to play with that songbird lyricism that's exclusively his. This is true of Jarrett's "Belonging", the “Officium” alliance with the Hilliard Ensemble, Shankar's "Song For Everyone" and Gary Peacock’s “Voice From The Past – Paradigm” (with DeJohnette and Tomasz Stanko), just some of the contexts to which Garbarek has responded with delightful soloistic invention. The work with Miroslav returns him, fairly unambiguously, to jazz, albeit a "universal" jazz, shaped by European and American perspectives. It is enlightening to hear him playing Vitous's rolling "Tramp Blues" or shaping free melodies with an Ornette-like buoyancy on "Bamboo Forest".
Chick Corea, not unlike Miroslav himself, has been a chameleonic player over the years, trying on and discarding a range of musical personalities. The nature of the work with Vitous on "Universal Syncopations" naturally carries echoes of their association in the aforementioned trio with Haynes, but Corea is also adept at providing impulses to the other soloists, and his angular, jabbing rhythm playing recalls the time when he pushed Miles to new ideas, on sessions such as "Filles de Kilimanjaro" and "In A Silent Way".
It was Miroslav Vitous who introduced his countryman Jan Hammer to John McLaughlin, helping, indirectly, to launch the guitarist's Mahavishnu Orchestra, but the McLaughlin heard on "Universal Syncopations" has perhaps more in common with the pre-Mahavisnu player – with flashes of the focussed, exciting improviser of "Extrapolation" (with John Surman and Tony Oxley), and “Emergency” and “Turn It Over” (with Tony Williams’ Lifetime).
Miroslav played on Jack DeJohnette's first album under his own name, "The DeJohnette Complex", vintage 1969. Back then, as now, DeJohnette's drumming was already distinguished by its resourcefulness. There is nothing else in jazz like DeJohnette's elastic beat.
If the settings that Miroslav Vitous has shaped for his colleagues on "Universal Syncopations" - compositions both wide-open and subtle - cast each of them in a new light as old associations are reinvestigated from today's viewpoint, they also provide a superb showcase for the bassist himself. Long one of the truly outstanding bassists in jazz, his command of the instrument is complete. Perhaps more than any jazz bassist since Scott La Faro, he is a musician who has as much to contribute to the “frontline” of an ensemble as to any conventional notion of rhythm section functions, which he also handles authoritatively. He plays the foreground as much as the background - majestically.
