critic’s pick 107
Let’s begin here by wishing happy birthday to Eberhard Weber. The German bassist who has been a cornerstone artist of the European jazz label ECM for nearly all of its four decade history turns 70 on Friday. In blending compositional, instrumental and improvisational skills with Euro-classical undercurrents and textured works of rich but relaxed lyricism, he has been a prime architect of ECM’s atmospheric sound.
Though ailing in recent years due to a stroke, Weber’s past is represented by a new triple-disc box set called Colours. This isn’t a career retrospective, but a package of three extraordinary ECM albums cut over a five year period by the Weber-led quartet Colours that came to define the orchestral beauty of the bassist’s music.
Like much of Weber’s work, the recordings - Yellow Fields (1976), Silent Feet (1978) and Little Movements (1980) - have drifted in and out of print over the years. What a delight it is to have them all under the same roof again.
Yellow Fields set the Colours group - Weber, American reed player Charlie Mariano, Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen and the extraordinary German keyboardist Rainer Bruninghaus - in motion, although its approach to subtle textures and ambient-like orchestration was established on Weber’s sublime 1974 ECM debut (cut with Bruninghaus), The Colours of Chloe.
Weber makes little fuss with his playing, although his adjustments to the bass (the use of extra strings along with the design of a solid body electric double bass) greatly increases the instrument’s vocabulary, as shown the ballet-like exchanges between Weber and Christensen’s percussion tapestries on Yellow Fields‘ title tune. But the bulk of the recording is hardly a solo vehicle. Bruninghaus’ early use of electric keyboards along with his fully versed voice on acoustic piano gives the bassist much to work with. Ditto for the soprano saxophone and Indian reed playing of Mariano who, on all three albums, exhibits an alternately ghostly and playful tone that recalls fellow ECM journeymen and frequent Weber collaborator Jan Garbarek.
The exchange of Christensen for Soft Machine alumnus John Marshall on drums for the latter two albums marks Colours’ only personnel switch. But Marshall’s approach on Silent Feet (arguably Weber’s finest hour) is light and expressive, which allows the music to open up. Credit much of that expansion to Bruninghaus. His limber skirmishes with Weber and Marshall mirror the melodic, emotive soundscapes that another then-blooming ECM artist, Pat Metheny, would soon run with.
Ironically, Silent Feet was recorded almost concurrently with Metheny’s second ECM set, Watercolors, which featured Weber as bassist.
The ensemble Colours sound starts to reveal familiarities on Little Movements, such as the keyboard couplets repeated like mantras, the moody mix of piano and Weber’s arco bass playing and the melancholy shades of Mariano’s soprano sax and flute. All beautifully mingle on Little Movements‘ exquisite The Last Stage of a Long Journey.
Let’s not stop here, shall we? How about a full reissue overhaul of Weber’s work? The Colours box makes a great birthday treat. But it beckons for a return of all the bassist’s out-of print recordings to full, visible and Colour-ful glory.


















I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.