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Eberhard Weber: Rarum Vol. 18 - Selected Recordings

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 2004.02.01
Time:
 73:05
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Manfred Eicher, Eberhard Weber
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.ecmrecords.com
Appears with: Jan Garbarek
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Nimbus (R.Towner) - 6:27
[2] The Whopper (P.Metheny) - 6:29
[3] Oasis (P.Metheny) - 4:02
[4] Silent Feet (E.Weber) - 12:12
[5] Fluid Rustle (E.Weber) - 7:25
[6] Maurizius (E.Weber) - 8:11
[7] Gesture (J.Garbarek) - 8:41
[8] Closing Scene (E.Weber) - 6:36
[9] Her Wild Ways (J.Garbarek) - 6:46
[10] French Diary (E.Weber) - 6:47

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Eberhard Weber - Bass on [1-9], Producer on [8]

John Christensen - Drums on [1]
Ralph Towner - 12-String Guitar on [1]
Jan Garbarek - Soprano Saxophone on [7,9], Tenor Saxophone on [1], Flute on [1]
Dan Gottlieb - Drums on [2]
Steve Swallow - Bass on [2]
Pat Metheny - Electric Guitar on [2,3]
Charlie Mariano - Soprano Saxophone on [4]
John Marshall - Drums on [4]
Gary Burton - Vibraphone on [2,5], Marimba on [5]
Bonnie Herman - Voice on [5]
Norma Winstone - Voice on [5]
Lyle Mays - Piano on [6]
Bill Frisell - Guitar on [5-7]
Marilyn Mazur - Drums on [9]
Michael DiPasqua - Drums on [6,7,10], Percussion on [7,10]
Rainer Brüninghaus - Piano on [4,9,10], Keyboards on [10]
Paul McCandless - Soprano Saxophone on [6,10], English Horn on [10]

Manfred Eicher - Producer on [1-7,9,10]
Jan Erik Kongshaug - Engineer
Jochen Scheffter - Engineer on [8]
Martin Wieland - Engineer on [4-6]
Einer Bangsund - Photography
Gisela Plekta - Photography
Roberto Masotti - Photography
Rolf Frison - Photography
Signe Mähler - Photography
W. Patrick Hinely - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2004 CD ECM Records - B0001804-02

Track 1 from Ralph Towner, Solstice. Recorded December 1974, Oslo.
Track 2 from Gary Burton, Passengers. Recorded November 1976, Oslo.
Track 3 from Pat Metheny, Watercolors. Recorded February 1977, Oslo.
Track 4 from Eberhard Weber Colours, Silent Feet. Recorded November 1977, Ludwigsburg.
Track 5 from Eberhard Weber, Fluid Rustle. Recorded January 1979, Ludwigsburg.
Track 6 from Eberhard Weber, Later That Evening. Recorded March 1982, Ludwigsburg.
Track 7 from Jan Gabarek, Wayfarer. Recorded March 1983, Oslo.
Track 8 from Eberhard Weber, Pendulum. Recorded Spring 1993, Munich.
Track 9 from Jan Gabarek, Rites. Recorded March 1988, Oslo.
Track 10 from Eberhard Weber, Endless Days. Recorded April 2000, Oslo.



Some days you want to hear a bit of everything, so today's Rediscovery? Eberhard Weber's :rarum Selected Recordings, a compilation of some of his work as a leader and a guest for the venerable ECM label, ranging from his own Colours group to collaborations with Pat Metheny, Gary Burton, Ralph Towner, Norma Winstone and Jan Garbarek.

That he can no longer play bass, the result of a 2007 stroke, is a painful thing for his fans, assuaged only by the rich legacy he has already left. This compilation, its selections chosen by Weber himself, is not only a good entry point for those new to this wonderful bassist and composer, but a fine recording in its own right, thanks to ECM's usual astute track sequencing.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you know this record, and if so, how do you feel about it?

John Kelman - December 25, 2014
© 2015 All About Jazz



Imagine the scene: You're in your seventh hour of practicing your instrument and you're ready for some nice wine and cheese, when the phone rings. It's Manfred Eicher from ECM, head of the world's most famous art music label, calling to say that he's kicking off a new series of anthologies. Not only does he want to give you a disc, but he wants you to pick the tunes. So you go to your record collection and dust off up to 30 years of old vinyl, and as you flip through possibly dozens of albums, you have to decide: Who are you? And what do you want to say about yourself?

Like the most well-adjusted guy at the high school reunion, Pat Metheny used his set to rattle off hit after hit and reminisce in the liner notes about all the good times he had, before leaving for a bigger label. Chick Corea left out his influential experimental work with Circle, while Keith Jarrett packed his set with material that he didn't think we paid enough attention to the first time, including a bunch of weird stuff with clavichord and recorders. And at the other end of the "look at me" spectrum from Jarrett, Bill Frisell included a piece that he didn't even write or perform on. No matter how strong the collections tend to be, no artistic or commercial logic-- no hard curatorial judgment-- guides what ends up on them, and that's both revealing and flawed.

German bassist and composer Eberhard Weber has worked with the ECM label almost since its founding. Weber performs on an electric, five-string bass of his own design, which produces a unique, almost rubbery, elongated tone, higher than usual for an upright and elastically melodic. Most of his major work came out on ECM, aside from one stint in pop music-- a few appearances with Kate Bush, who used Weber's distinct tone most notably on "Houdini." Nowadays, he tours with Jan Garbarek's group and has only cut two albums of his own in the last decade, most recently in 2001.

It's not surprising that Weber splits this album almost equally between sideman gigs and his own bands. But he doesn't explain why he skipped his only masterpiece-- his debut, The Colours of Chloe. One of ECM's earliest classics, Chloe still sounds unprecedented; the only albums I could compare it to are some of the dreamier fusion and prog music of the time from maybe Soft Machine, and its most childlike moments might appeal to fans of Boards of Canada. Weber, keyboardist Rainer Brüninghaus, and fluegelhornist Ack van Rooyen front a chorus of cellos, whose long, drowning tones evoke the feel of crumbling walls: From a European, it echoes the feeling of an old civilization growing older, of an almost epic weariness that threatens to drag down the entire group-- especially on "An Evening with Vincent Van Ritz", recently sampled-- and why don't more people sample ECM?-- by Prefuse 73, where they and the wordless, keening voice of Gisela Schäuble tug at Weber's feet.

Yet Weber soars across the solemnity, pulling high notes and elegiac melodies onto the foreground to mark the death of one generation with the emergence of another. On the slow "More Colours", Weber's bass yo-yos against the heavy silences. And the title song, still Weber's most famous piece, has a simple, sing-songy primary melody that Weber performs on the ocarina, evoking a peeking-over-the-crib revelation like an infant realizing for the first time that the sun rises and sets. And while the through-composed elements frame the album, the solos by Bruninghaus and (on "Van Ritz") van Rooyen are so perfectly formed that I can still recall them note for note.

Chloe remains Weber's most endearing work, not least because he's so obviously finding his way through the album; he recalls, in the liner notes to this collection, that he had to record the title song in two stages before he figured out how to make it work. Maybe he feels that the album was immature or too rough around the edges, because he doesn't include a single song from it.

Weber does tap his 70s work twice, with "Silent Feet", where Brüninghaus' extended piano solo takes off like horses at a shotgun blast, and "Fluid Rustle", which is nearly as enigmatic as the Chloe tracks. Weber builds the piece from a theme that could've been played by a five-year-old on a xylophone, then gives that theme to vibes virtuoso Gary Burton and reflects it through a hall of mirrors of overdubbed, wordless female vocals. Weber also includes some decently jazzy sideman gigs, including his vigorous accompaniment on Metheny's composition "The Whopper", named for Weber's favorite American sandwich.

But as Weber entered the 80s, he moved even further towards the neo-classical, largely composed music that he's making now, where the improvisation naps within a refined, chamber ensemble-like environment. Of a track from 1982, Weber writes in the liner notes, "For my favourite sequence on 'Maurizius' I have to wait 4 minutes and 16 seconds. I guess one has to be a musician to understand that." Actually, even teenagers know that "Stairway to Heaven" doesn't start with the guitar solo. But if the somewhat breathless lilt that hits halfway through the piece is worth waiting for, "Maurizius" mostly sounds limp and channeled, especially under the deathly peaceful reeds of Windham Hill artist Paul McCandless. Likewise, the final track, 2001's "French Diary", swells and paces like a soap opera-soundtrack. Weber actually sits this one out, so set on being a composer that he blows off his stature as one of ECM's greatest bass improvisers. The piece suffers without him.

"There is a great discrepancy between classical music and jazz in that classical music concentrates more on the tried-and-tested, while in jazz the focus is more on the experimental," writes Weber. "And favoring emotion and spontaneity, however superficial, some people-- critics included-- often lose sight of quality." He's got me there, because ECM's worst-- by which I mean, coziest-- music favors quality over invention. You can often learn the most about an artist, or a label, from his most boring recordings, because that's when the clichés and old habits come out. ECM has been typecast as gorgeous but complacent, and it's sometimes called the father of new age because it let slip all the tension and conflict that new age dispensed with entirely. So it fits that instead of reevaluating or, God forbid, judging these artists, these artist compilation discs would turn into souvenir-style recordings.

But does friendliness make great music? Weber makes a cogent case for how he got to his present work, but he doesn't make room for the pieces that don't fit. He's too busy polishing his epitaph to remember that some musicians make their best work when they don't sound like themselves-- when they wrestle with new ideas, instead of sinking into the same familiar, quality-controlled surroundings.

Chris Dahlen - July 6, 2004
© 2015 Pitchfork Media



The Eberhard Weber volume in the ECM :Rarum series is another one of those revelatory spotlights on a player and composer whose entire identity has been shaped by his association with the label. The revelation is that Weber's bass playing and rainbow sense of harmonic interplay has in turn been perhaps more integral to shaping the sound and identity of the label. This collection of ten tracks showcases Weber's contributions as the leader of his fine, longstanding band Colours, his solo projects, and his contributions to the recordings of Gary Burton, Pat Metheny (who could forget his elegant, expressionistic bass playing on Watercolors, Metheny's sophomore ECM effort?), Ralph Towner, and Jan Garbarek. The most noteworthy of the tunes here is his contrapuntal engagement with Burton on "The Whopper" from the latter's Passengers album from 1976, with a glorious solo by Metheny as well. In addition, there is the original recording of "Silent Feet," one of Weber's most noteworthy compositions, where his sidemen include Rainer Bruninghaus, Charlie Mariano, and drummer John Marshall. The most mystifying thing here is the title track from Fluid Rustle, with vocalists Norma Winstone and Bonnie Herman, Burton on vibes, and guitarist Bill Frisell. Given that this is a mid-priced recording, this cut is worth the entire price of the album. There is no language to describe accurately its sense of haunting beauty, or its out of space and time languor. Because of its surprise, vision, and dignity, the Weber volume ultimately becomes one of the more essential purchases in this series.

Thom Jurek - All music Guide
 

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