Miroslav Vitouš

Miroslav Vitouš

born on 6/12/1947 in Prag, Hauptstadt Prag, Czechia

Miroslav Vitouš

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Miroslav Ladislav Vitouš (born 6 December 1947) is a Czech jazz bassist who has had an extensive career in the US.

Biography

Born in Prague, he began the violin at age six,[1] and started playing the piano at age ten, and bass at fourteen. As a young man in Europe, Vitouš was a competitive swimmer. One of his early music groups was the Junior Trio with his brother Alan on drums and fellow Czech luminary-to-be Jan Hammer on keyboards. He studied music at the Prague Conservatory (under František Pošta),[2] subsequently winning an international music contest in Vienna, earning him a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.[1]

In 1967, in Chicago, Miles Davis saw Vitous playing with Clark Terry and invited him to join his group for a residency at New York’s The Village Gate.[3]

Vitouš's virtuoso jazz bass playing has led criticsto place him in the same league as Scott LaFaro, Dave Holland, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Arild Andersen. A representative example of Vitouš's double bass playing is Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (1968), with Chick Corea on piano and Roy Haynes on drums. This album shows his strong rhythmic sense, innovative walking lines, and intensity and abandon as an improviser.

His first album as a leader, Infinite Search,[1] re-released with minor changes as Mountain in the Clouds, featured several key figures from the then-budding jazz fusion movement: John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette, and Joe Henderson.

He has worked with Larry Coryell, Jan Hammer, Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Jan Garbarek and Michel Petrucciani.

In 1970 he was a founding member of the group Weather Report.[1] In 1973 he was replaced by Alphonso Johnson and compensated as a founding member. Vitouš has since discussed his contentious departure from Weather Report with journalists, specifically regarding his relationship with Zawinul. He stated, "I enjoyed the beginning of it very much, but it turned into a little bit of a drag in the end because Joe Zawinul wanted to go in another direction. The band was seeking success and fame and they basically changed their music to go a commercial way into a Black funk thing". He also felt aggrieved financially – "I was an equal partner and basically, I didn't get anything. We had a corporation together that was completely ignored. If you have a company and three people own it, and then two people say 'Okay, we don’t want to work like this anymore. It's just two of us now,' normally, they break down the stock and pay off the third person".[4]

In 1981 he performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, held in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Creative Music Studio. In 1984 he collaborated with Stanley Clarke.[5] In 1988 Vitouš moved back to Europe to focus on composing, but nonetheless continued to perform in festivals.

In 2001, Vitouš reunited with Corea and Haynes (as the Now He Sings, Now He Sobs trio) for a concert in a series entitled "Rendezvous in New York" in celebration of Corea's 60th birthday. The album of the same name came out in 2003, and earned Corea a Grammy Award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo on the composition "Matrix", on which Vitouš played.[6]

Discography

As leader

As sideman

With Weather Report

  • Weather Report (Columbia, 1971)
  • I Sing the Body Electric (Columbia, 1972)
  • Live in Tokyo (Columbia, 1972)
  • Sweetnighter (Columbia, 1973)
  • Mysterious Traveller (Columbia, 1974)

With Franco Ambrosetti

  • Light Breeze (Enja, 1998)

With Roy Ayers

  • Stoned Soul Picnic (Atlantic, 1968)

With Chick Corea

  • Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (Solid State, 1968)
  • Trio Music (ECM, 1981)
  • Trio Music Live in Europe (ECM, 1984)
  • Rendezvous in New York (Stretch, 2003)

With Larry Coryell

With Jack DeJohnette

With Jan Garbarek

  • StAR (ECM, 1991)

With Stan Getz

  • The Song Is You (1969)

With Herbie Mann

  • Windows Opened (Atlantic, 1968)
  • The Inspiration I Feel (Atlantic, 1968)
  • Memphis Underground (Atlantic, 1969)
  • Stone Flute (Embryo, 1969 [1970])
  • Live at the Whisky a Go Go (Atlantic, 1969)

With Terje Rypdal

  • Terje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnette (ECM, 1978)
  • To Be Continued (ECM, 1981)

With Sadao Watanabe

  • Round Trip (1974)

With Laszlo Gardony

  • The Secret (Antilles, 1988)

With Between the Times

  • Octagon (ACT, 2007)

With Polajka, Nikolaj Nikitin ensemble

  • Tales from my Diary (Hudobný fond – Slovak music fund 2014)

References

  1. ^ a b c d Jung, Fred (10 October 2003). "A Fireside Chat With Miroslav Vitous". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2010-06-20. 
  2. ^ Olsen, Paul (7 January 2008). "Miroslav Vitous: It Comes Down to Taste". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2010-06-20. 
  3. ^ "ECM". ecmrecords.com. Retrieved 23 February 2015. 
  4. ^ Prasad, Prasad. "Miroslav Vitous – Freeing the muse by Anil". Inner Views. Retrieved 2015-01-07. 
  5. ^ 1984 Sydney Town Hall, producer Ian Davis (ABC radio)
  6. ^ "Past Winners Search". Grammy.com. Retrieved 24 March 2012. 

External links

This page was last modified 13.07.2018 17:40:18

This article uses material from the article Miroslav Vitouš from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.