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Album Review: Miroslav Vitous Group, "Remembering Weather Report" (ECM)
The Weather Report that Czech upright bassist Miroslav Vitous remembers is the one he helped create in the early 1970s with saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul. He honors that past with a stripped down, acoustic approach on "Remembering Weather Report" that captures some of the spirit of the electric jazz band but not the compositional cohesion.
His Weather Report is not the buoyant fusion of party music and cerebral exercises created once Jaco Pastorius entered the picture. It was Vitous who left the group when it appeared it would be headed in that direction.
The Vitous version is a scramble of stops and starts, delayed synchronization and musicians responding to the last move of a bandmate. The music is full of shards, some of them intersecting and overlapping, most of them traveling their own paths. Performances have their admirable moments but too often the music lacks a center. It is sparse and open-ended, the saxophone of Gary Campbell being the most prominent creator here alongside Vitous.
It may be Vitous' memory of his years in the band when they were recording "I Sing the Body Electric," but it reminds this listener of other more adventurous acoustic projects of the period, chiefly Dave Holland's two improvised albums with saxophonist Sam Rivers.
