Eberhard Weber - Encore (2015)

'Encore' is a companion volume to 'Résumé', Eberhard Weber's widely-praised solo album released in 2012. Here he returns to the many live recordings of his tenure with the Jan Garbarek Group, isolating his unique electric bass solos and reworking them into new pieces with the addition of his own keyboard parts.
"I became what you might call a composer of New Music," says Weber, "with the proviso that I make use of old things." This time he has a special guest in veteran Dutch flugelhorn player Ack van Rooyen, who played on Weber's ECM leader debut 'The Colours of Chloë', recorded in 1973. Van Rooyen now adds his own subtle colours to Weber's contemporary sound-montages. The bass solos were recorded between 1990 and 2007 in thirteen European cities from Edinburgh to Seville, and the music was mixed and edited at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in November 2014.

The process of remoulding solos from the past to make music in the present is an unconventional one but its potential was evident already on 'Résumé'. In Jazz Journal Michael Tucker described that disc as "music of dark and deep yet also rhythmically engaging, at times even playful substance. Featuring judicious use of digital delay and loops, and with diversely unfolding and layered pizzicato and arco motifs offering what registers throughout as mythopoetically-charged melody, the meta-music that is 'Résumé' is perhaps the most thoroughly arresting of all the albums Weber has made." 'Encore' - issued in Eberhard Weber's 75th year - carries its momentum forward.