Miroslav Vitous - Music of Weather Report

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 “Acrobat’s Issues” 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 time playing and rhythmically free pulses, with Miroslav’s arco bass playing sometimes sounding like a third horn in between the two saxophones.