Weather Report - Live In Austria 1971 - CD2

Thanks to the commercial success of Miles Davis's 'Bitches Brew' there was a lot of fusion music around in the early 1970s. Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul were an integral part of Miles's project but unlike most who followed him they managed to leave acoustic jazz behind without embracing rock. Zawinul's comment that 'in Weather Report everyone solos and no one solos' implied that the band might be heading off into free-improv territory, but they weren't. Instead there are brief, beautiful melodies, fragmented overlapping solos, the bass functions as both bass and lead instrument, the drumming and percussion swing and occasionally rock but not in a conventional way. All concerned avoid recognisable jazz runs in their solos. Wayne's soprano pecks and flutters. Joe's electric piano still sounds space-age half a century later. Some pieces are impressionistic tone-poems, others hurtle forwards with a
ragged momentum. And still, with all of that going on, there is so much space. Great as the later work is, nothing in Weather Report's cannon is more original than the early music and this recording is closer to the feel of their debut LP than the official live album they recorded in Tokyo six months later.
Performed live at the International Music Forum, Stiftshoff, Ossiach, Austria on 27th July 1971 and broadcast on Austrian radio.

Joe Zawinul - piano & electric piano; Wayne Shorter - tenor & soprano saxophone; Miroslav Vitous - bass & electric bass; Alphonse
Mouzon - drums; Dom Um Romao - percussion & flute.
Tracklisting: Track listing: Disc 1: 1. Firefish / 2. Early Minor / 3. Morning Lake / 4. Waterfall. Disc 2: 1. Umbrellas / 2. Eurydice/The Moors / 3.
Seventh Arrow / 4. Orange Lady