Miroslav Vitous
Music of Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous double bass, keyboards
Gary Campbell soprano and tenor saxophones
Roberto Bonisolo soprano and tenor saxophones
Aydin Esen keyboards
Gerald Cleaver drums
Nasheet Waits drums
Recording producer and engineer: Miroslav Vitous
Recorded March and May 2010, February and March 2011 at Universal Syncopations Studios
Assistant engineer: Andrea Luciano
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 10, 2016

The bass of Miroslav Vitous has been a hub of creative activity since making its ECM debut on 1979’s collaboration with Terje Rypdal and Jack DeJohnette. In the intervening six years since leaving Weather Report, he had deepened his voice on the instrument, taking his arco dialects into more fluent directions than ever. Unlike its soft companion, Remembering Weather Report, which evoked the feel of his seminal band, this latest redux dives headlong into the cofounder’s originals that made Weather Report shine. Fascinating not only for its audacity, but also for its assembly, it pairs drummers Gerald Cleaver, occupying the left channel with saxophonist Gary Campbell, and Nasheet Waits, occupying the right with saxophonist Roberto Bonisolo. Rounded by Turkish keyboardist Aydin Esen, the sound is best realized on the tune “Seventh Arrow,” in which both sides of this improvisationally free equation flip on a glowing equals sign. Along with “Morning Lake,” which unleashes a quiet army of melodic water skeeters, it references Weather Report’s very first album from 1971 on Columbia.

The music of Joe Zawinul is a touchstone of the program, which opens with “Scarlet Woman Variations” in a necklace of reiterations as threaded by an electronically enhanced Vitous and the clarion sopranism of Campbell. In that same spirit the sextet takes on a reshuffled “Birdland Variations,” wherein joy abounds. Like the two “Multi Dimension Blues” of Vitous sandwiching it, it finds beauty behind closed eyes and open hands. Best described in Vitous’s own words as “two galaxies or universes pulling and affecting each other,” the two tandems therein create more than they replace. Esen’s atmospheric touches in “Birdland” evoke more of the same, only now with a more nostalgic feel that’s still fresh as a sunrise. Wayne Shorter’s “Pinocchio” gets an even freer treatment that traces the present band’s luminescence with astronomical precision.

In “Acrobat Issues,” Vitous rebinds an old book with burnished leather, leaving the gold stamping to the dialoguing tenors and the final stitching to his drummers. Hearing their interplay so beautifully recorded will give those familiar with Weather Report much to celebrate, while to those not it will serve as the eyepiece of a time-honored microscope looking in on a watershed moment of jazz history.

Miroslav Vitous Group
Remembering Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous double-bass
Franco Ambrosetti trumpet
Gary Campbell tenor saxophone
Gerald Cleaver drums
Michel Portal bass clarinet
Recorded fall 2006 and spring 2007 at Universal Syncopation Studios
Recording producer and engineer: Miroslav Vitous
Assistant engineer: Andrea Luciano
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

After the challenging yet ultimately rewarding experimentalism of Universal Syncopations II, Remembering Weather Report comes as a breath of fresh air for bassist Miroslav Vitous, who preens previously undetected feathers in this warped look back. Indeed, similarities to the titular fusion band with which Vitous once played (and which he co-founded with Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul) are glancing at best. Here that original band’s fiercely democratic approach takes on new hues as individual instruments click through the front line like a roulette of alter egos in the form of Americans Gerald Cleaver on drums and Gary Campbell on tenor, and Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti.

In addition, French clarinetist and new music advocate Michel Porter joins the quartet on half of the album’s six hefty tunes. His involvement unleashes the firmest successes thereof, as in an aching set of variations on Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” (the only track not from the bandleader’s pen) and “Surfing With Michel,” a spirited duet between Vitous and Porter that is the missing capstone to the core quartet’s great pyramid. Another set of variations on Wayne Shorter material finds the bassist shuffling between arco and pizzicato modes, all the while navigating a flurry of drums with a papercutter’s feel for negative space. A surreal and frenetic sense of control reigns, skipping with assurance.

The tripartite “Semina” is Vitous at his most honest, although this time Cleaver divulges heart and soul, inciting as he does calligraphic brilliance from Campbell and, in the concluding “Blues Report,” a swift kick to the stratosphere, where soars the album’s pièce de résistance, “When Dvořák Meets Miles.” Fine arco playing connects blats of muted trumpet, and all with a percussive finish that lingers sweetly on the palate. As ever, the interactions are subtle yet naked, each element brimming with snap, crackle, and pop.

Remembering Weather Report is not for the jazz tourist. Its highly evolved messages comprise a raw manifesto on what it means to be progressive in a regressive climate. Motifs run the gamut from static to ballistic, but quickly dissolve in favor of broader improvisational paths, each a vein to some distant thematic artery. The album is further notable for being recorded in Vitous’s own Italian studio. His direct involvement in not only the elicitation but also the rendering of these sounds lends remarkable immediacy to the space in which they unfold.