{"title":"Eberhard Weber","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eEberhard Weber started on cello at six, switched to double bass in high school when his orchestra teacher needed a bassist, and spent his first decade as a professional working in German jazz and jazz-rock groups alongside pianist Wolfgang Dauner, recording with Joe Pass, Stéphane Grappelli, Hampton Hawes and Mal Waldron along the way. None of that sounds like it leads to one of the most distinctive voices in the history of the bass. But Weber had been quietly modifying his instrument, adding a fifth string tuned to low C and developing an approach to the electric upright that used the bass melodically rather than rhythmically, ostinatos and sustained tones carrying compositional weight rather than walking lines keeping time. When Manfred Eicher heard the result and recorded it at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg in December 1973, the album that came out, \"The Colours of Chloë\" (ECM, 1974), won the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis and was described by ECM's own documentation as \"a near-perfect album\" by \"an artist whose creative vision seemed completely mature.\" It is routinely cited as an early defining instance of European chamber jazz and of ECM's emancipation from a US mainstream. Weber formed the quartet Colours immediately after, with Charlie Mariano on soprano saxophone and flutes, Rainer Brüninghaus on piano and synthesiser, and Jon Christensen on drums, before Christensen left after \"Yellow Fields\" (1975) and was replaced by John Marshall. Alongside the Colours work, Weber recorded as a sideman with Gary Burton, Pat Metheny and Ralph Towner, and spent two decades as a core member of Jan Garbarek's group. \u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"eberhard-weber-the-colours-of-chloe-1974-japanese-ecm-vinyl-lp","title":"Eberhard Weber - The Colours Of Chloë (1974 Japanese ECM Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEberhard Weber - \u003cem\u003eThe Colours Of Chloë\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese ECM Records (PAP-9004, Trio Records)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWeber had spent years as a sideman before this. What he brought to his own record was a bass sound nobody else had: a custom-built instrument with an extended upper register and a long, singing sustain that let the bass function as a lead voice rather than a foundation. That sound is the spine of the album, but it is the company he keeps that makes the record what it is. The cellos of the Südfunk Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart arrive in unison blocks that have nothing to do with conventional string sweetening, sitting somewhere closer to chamber writing than to jazz arrangement. Rainer Brüninghaus, an old friend, plays acoustic piano with real clarity and then layers electric pianos and synthesiser into rotating, repetitive figures that were unlike anything on a jazz record in 1973. Ack van Rooyen's flugelhorn keeps the melodic material warm. Peter Giger and Ralf Hübner handle the percussion, Hübner appearing only on the title track. The result is symphonic jazz, picturesque and romantic in places, minimal and harmonically abstruse in others.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"More Colours\" opens the album and the title track follows, both anchored by the interplay between Weber's bass and the cello section. \"An Evening With Vincent Van Ritz\" closes side A. Then \"No Motion Picture\" takes the whole of side B, nineteen and a half minutes built on Brüninghaus's whirling multi-tracked keyboards with Weber's ocarina carrying much of the melodic weight, an instrument choice that should not work in this context and does. All four compositions are Weber's.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the Japanese pressing on ECM PAP-9004, manufactured by Trio Records, on a laminated sleeve.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ECM Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43819868651579,"sku":null,"price":75.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_7815.jpg?v=1784500635"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/eberhard-weber.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}