Remembering Weather Report

Tributee: Weather Report.
Personnel: Miroslav Vitous (double bass); Michel Portal (bass clarinet); Gary Campbell (tenor saxophone); Franco Ambrosetti (trumpet); Gerald Cleaver (drums).
Bassist Miroslav Vitous was an original member of the key '70s electric fusion group Weather Report along with saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul. On 2009's REMEMBERING WEATHER REPORT, he pays oblique homage to his old band not by reprising Shorter and Zawinul compositions per se. Instead he plunges headlong into a 21st-century-style all-acoustic free improv with the help of esteemed French clarinetist Michel Portal and fluent downtown drummer Gerard Cleaver. The first track, "Variations on W. Shorter," alludes to "Nerfetti," a Miles Davis '60s-era Shorter piece rather than Weather Report, while the second goes even father afield with "Variations on Lonely Woman," which takes as its starting point Ornette Coleman's greatest composition. Vitous is shrewd to start this finely produced ECM session on such firm footing. Later he gives Portal his head on the even freer "Surfing With Michel" and imagines a musical coming together of 19th- and 20th-century genius on "When Dvorak Meets Miles." It sounds like Vitous has the great trumpeter (and original fusionist ) as much on his mind as Weather Report. To that end, he gives generous space to Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti, who makes a strong showing throughout as does tenor saxophionist Gary Campbell.