Weather Report, those legendary harbingers of ‘jazz-rock fusion’, grew into a commercial juggernaut and briefly courted mainstream popularity in the mid-1970s, but the group’s origins were in a looser conception that owed as much to free jazz and the 1960s avant garde as it did to rock, funk or R&B.
Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous was one of the group’s founders, and his allegiance to that original spirit remains strong.
Here he re-examines the iconic Weather Report repertoire more in defiance than in tribute. Familiar themes such as Scarlett Woman, Birdland and Pinocchio rear up out of the depths of an improvised maelstrom, like shadows in the night, familiar but cast in new roles, and played with nothing like reverence by a talented young sextet that includes drummers Gerald Cleaver and Nasheet Waits.
