Universal Syncopations - Miroslav Vitous

Dec

11

Universal Syncopations - Miroslav Vitous

≡ Category: 2000s, Post Bop, Reviews, Worth A Listen |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

WORTH A LISTEN

Rating:

I, for one, was looking forward to listening to Universal Syncopations. Post Weather Report, I have found Miroslav Vitous’ recorded work to be extremely disappointing, but on Universal Syncopations he is joined by several players that he’s produced some of his best work with. I’m speaking of guitarist John McLaughlin and keyboard player Chick Corea, who joined Vitous on Larry Coryell’s classic date Spaces. There’s also Jack DeJohnette, the drummer on Miroslav Vitous’ classic date Infinite Search, which also featured John McLaughlin.

On the negative side of the ledger, from my point of view, saxophonist Jan Garbarek, a longtime compatriot of Vitous, is heavily featured on Universal Syncopations.

From the first notes of the release, it’s gratifying to notice that Vitous sounds absolutely wonderful. His bass tone is sumptous and he displays the wonderful feel that we remember from Infinite Search, Spaces and the early Weather Report dates.

The opening cut, Bamboo Forest, consists largely of a simple descending bass pattern with Jan Garbarek essaying the melody with his trademark keening, vibrato-less sax. Jack Dejohnette taps away lightly in the background. It’s pleasant enough, but it doesn’t really amount to much.

Univoyage is thankfully much more ambitious and features John McLaughlin and Chick Corea. You can never tell quite where Miroslav is going to take you. He starts the tune with a descending motif, but soon enough, he’s playing a pedal point and Chick Corea takes over the harmonic development of the tune. Jan Garbarek contributes some melodic fragments and McLaughlin enters gradually, adding accents here and there. Out of nowhere, we’re shifting imperceptibly in and out of swing time while McLaughlin adds flurries of notes of a scalar nature. Miroslav Vitous uses Valery Ponomarev on trumpet and Isaac Smith on trombone to grace the arrangement with sparse horn hits. To me, Univoyage isn’t as appealing as some of the tunes on Mountains In The Clouds, for instance, but it’s undeniably interesting and different. If the whole album were this good, it would have a higher rating.

For Tramp Blues, which by the way does not have a blues form, Miroslav plays in a bluesy manner. So does Jan Garbarek, in an ersatz European kind of way. Again, Miroslav adds horn hits to the arrangement, which tells you that he’s not just making it up as he goes along. There’s an actual song here. It’s just that it’s calculated to seem extemporaneous. I dunno. Maybe I’m a wuss, but this composition just strikes me as vague. I prefer tunes with hooks.

It seems like Miroslav Vitous is trying to get at a new way of writing jazz here, where hooks and melody don’t matter. The idea seems to be for the tune to shift organically in ways which are discernible to the composer but to nobody else. The listener has to feel his or her way along, like someone walking in a darkened room. The music is exploratory in nature. It’s impressionistic rather than literal.

This style is much more effective when Vitous is writing for larger forces, particularly when McLaughlin, Corea, or both are present. It also requires the active participation of the listener. If you aren’t paying attention, the music sounds like nothing much in particular, just pleasant noise.

In the end, I guess how much you like Universal Syncopations depends on comfortable you feel with impressionistic, open-ended jazz where you just kind of follow along in the moment and after the tune is finished, you aren’t really all that sure of what you just heard. It’s not really my thing, but I wouldn’t mind so much if all of the tunes utilized McLaughlin, Corea or both. There’s too much of just Miroslav, Garbarek, and Jack DeJohnette pointlessly noodling around for my taste.