Miroslav Vitouš
Encyclopedia
Miroslav Ladislav Vitouš (6 December 1947), is a Czech jazz
bassist
.
, he began the violin at age six, 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), subsequently winning an international music contest in Vienna
, earning him a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music
in Boston
, USA.
Vitouš's virtuoso
jazz bass playing has led critics to place him in the same league as Scott LaFaro
, Dave Holland
, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
and Christian McBride
. 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, 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 (slightly) elder statesman Joe Henderson
.
A founding member of the group Weather Report
, he has worked with Larry Coryell
, Jan Hammer
, Freddie Hubbard
, Miles Davis
, Chick Corea
, Wayne Shorter
, Joe Zawinul
, and Jan Garbarek
. Vitouš has since discussed his contentious departure from Weather Report with journalists, specifically regarding his relationship with Zawinul. Alphonso Johnson
, who replaced Vitouš, was himself replaced by the highly innovative and influential bassist Jaco Pastorius
.
In 1984 he collaborated with Stanley Clarke
.
In 1988 Vitouš moved back to Europe to focus on composing, but nonetheless continued to perform in festivals.
With Chick Corea
With Jack DeJohnette
With Jan Garbarek
With Terje Rypdal
With Sadao Watanabe
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
bassist
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
.
Biography
Born in PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, he began the violin at age six, and started playing the piano at age ten, and bass at fourteen. As a young man in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, 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
Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer is a composer, pianist and keyboardist. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the popular 1980s...
on keyboards. He studied music at the Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory, sometimes also Prague Conservatoire, in Czech Pražská konzervatoř, is a Czech secondary school in Prague dedicated to teaching the arts of music and theater acting.- Instruction :...
(under František Pošta), subsequently winning an international music contest in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, earning him a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, USA.
Vitouš's virtuoso
Virtuoso
A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in the fine arts, at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa...
jazz bass playing has led critics to place him in the same league as Scott LaFaro
Scott LaFaro
Rocco Scott LaFaro was an influential jazz bassist, perhaps best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio.-Biography:...
, Dave Holland
Dave Holland
Dave Holland is an English jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader who has been performing and recording for five decades. He has lived in the United States for 40 years....
, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
- Discography :* My Name Is Albert Ayler 1963 * Kirk in Copenhagen 1963 * Ben Webster in Denmark 1965-1971 Live at Danish Radio studios, Jazzhus Montmartre and Odd Fellow Palæet - Universal Music Denmark*One Flight Up 1964 *Sunday Walk 1969 - Discography :* My Name Is Albert Ayler 1963 (with...
and Christian McBride
Christian McBride
Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist. His father, Lee Smith, and his great uncle, Howard Cooper, are well known Philadelphia bassists who served as McBride's early mentors...
. A representative example of Vitouš's double bass playing is Now He Sings, Now He Sobs
Now He Sings, Now He Sobs
Now He Sings, Now He Sobs is a highly influential jazz piano trio album by Chick Corea, released March 14, 1968.The musicians on this album are Corea , Miroslav Vitouš , and Roy Haynes...
(1968), with Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
on piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and Roy Haynes
Roy Haynes
Roy Owen Haynes is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Haynes is among the most recorded drummers in jazz, and in a career lasting more than 60 years has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz...
on drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
. 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, re-released with minor changes as Mountain in the Clouds featured several key figures from the then-budding jazz fusion movement: John McLaughlin
John McLaughlin (musician)
John McLaughlin , also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer...
, Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
, Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. He is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, due to extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians like Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and Sonny...
, and (slightly) elder statesman Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than forty years Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note.-Early life:From a very large family with five sisters and nine...
.
A founding member of the group Weather Report
Weather Report
Weather Report was an American jazz-rock band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter...
, he has worked with Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell is an American jazz fusion guitarist.-Biography:Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas. He graduated from Richland High School, in Richland, Washington, where he played in local bands The Jailers, The Rumblers, The Royals, and The Flames. He also played with The Checkers from nearby...
, Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer is a composer, pianist and keyboardist. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the popular 1980s...
, Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard
Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 1960s and on...
, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
, Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
, Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...
, Joe Zawinul
Joe Zawinul
Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer.First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with...
, and Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...
. Vitouš has since discussed his contentious departure from Weather Report with journalists, specifically regarding his relationship with Zawinul. Alphonso Johnson
Alphonso Johnson
Alphonso Johnson is an American jazz bassist who has been influential since the early 1970s.-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johnson started off as an upright bass player, but switched to the electric bass in his late teens. Beginning his career in the early 1970s, Johnson showed...
, who replaced Vitouš, was himself replaced by the highly innovative and influential bassist Jaco Pastorius
Jaco Pastorius
John Francis Anthony Pastorius III , known as Jaco Pastorius, was an American jazz musician and composer widely acknowledged as a virtuoso electric bass player....
.
In 1984 he collaborated with Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke is an American jazz musician and composer known for his innovative and influential work on double bass and electric bass guitar as well as for his numerous film and television scores...
.
In 1988 Vitouš moved back to Europe to focus on composing, but nonetheless continued to perform in festivals.
As leader
- 1969: Infinite Search (aka Mountain in the Clouds) (Embryo RecordsEmbryo RecordsEmbryo Records was a jazz and rock record label founded by Herbie Mann as a division of Atlantic Records, itself distributed by the Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion Records. The label released albums in the years 1969 through 1977.-Discography:...
) - 1970: Purple
- 1976: Magical Shepherd
- 1976: Majesty Music
- 1977: Miroslav (FreedomFreedom RecordsFreedom Records was a jazz record label linked with the producer Alan Bates, as with his Black Lion Records.Individual recordings were distributed via Polydor Records and Transatlantic Records during the early 1970s before the company was bought by Arista Records.-Discography:*1000 Albert Ayler &...
) - 1978: Guardian Angels
- 1979: First Meeting (ECMECM (record label)ECM is a record label founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a wide variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres...
) - 1980: Miroslav Vitous GroupMiroslav Vitous GroupMiroslav Vitous Group is an album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded in 1980 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Eugene Chadbourne awarded the album 2½ stars stating "This is an album that flutters between different jazz camps in a manner that might seem...
(ECM) - 1982: Journey's EndJourney's End (album)Journey's End is an album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded in 1982 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by David R. Adler awarded the album 4 stars stating "Journey's End is highly recommended to those willing to search for it".-Track listing:# "U Dunaje U...
(ECM) - 1985: EmergenceEmergence (Miroslav Vitous album)Emergence is a solo album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded in 1985 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by David R. Adler awarded the album 3 stars stating "Emergence showcases Miroslav Vitous in a solo bass setting, with no overdubs...
(ECM) - 1992: AtmosAtmos (album)Atmos is an album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous featuring Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek recorded in 1992 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM) - 2003: Universal SyncopationsUniversal SyncopationsUniversal Syncopations is an album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded in 2003 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "Universal Syncopations is by turns a return to not the old forms, but rather to the manner of...
(ECM) - 2007: Universal Syncopations IIUniversal Syncopations IIUniversal Syncopations II is an album by Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded in 2004-05 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Alex Henderson awarded the album 3½ stars stating "The interesting thing is that while Universal Syncopations 2 stresses ensemble playing and...
(ECM) - 2009: Remembering Weather Report (ECM)
As sideman
With Weather ReportWeather Report
Weather Report was an American jazz-rock band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter...
- Weather Report (1971)
- I Sing the Body ElectricI Sing the Body Electric (album)I Sing the Body Electric is the second album released by Weather Report from 1972. The album includes two new members of the band: percussionist Dom Um Romão and drummer Eric Gravatt. The last three tracks were recorded live in concert in Tokyo, Japan on January 13, 1972...
(1972) - Live in TokyoLive in Tokyo (Weather Report album)Live in Tokyo is Weather Report's first live album released. It was recorded on January 13, 1972. It was one of five sold out concerts played in Japan during January 1972...
(1972) - SweetnighterSweetnighterSweetnighter is Weather Report's third studio album, released on Columbia Records in 1973. The group had recorded the songs in a five day stretch during February of the same year. It was to be the last album to feature founding member Miroslav Vitous as the primary bassist.-Track listing:#"Boogie...
(1973) - Mysterious TravellerMysterious TravellerMysterious Traveller is the fourth release of Weather Report. This album marked the end of bassist Miroslav Vitous's tenure with the band. Vitous was replaced by Alphonso Johnson. Another addition to the line-up is drummer Ishmael Wilburn...
(1974)
With Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
- Now He Sings, Now He SobsNow He Sings, Now He SobsNow He Sings, Now He Sobs is a highly influential jazz piano trio album by Chick Corea, released March 14, 1968.The musicians on this album are Corea , Miroslav Vitouš , and Roy Haynes...
(1968) - Trio MusicTrio MusicTrio Music is an album by Chick Corea, released in 1981 through the record label ECM. The album peaked at number seventeen on Billboard Jazz Albums chart....
(ECM, 1981) - Trio Music Live in EuropeTrio Music Live in EuropeTrio Music Live in Europe is a live album by pianist Chick Corea with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes recorded in Switzerlan in 1984 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Michael G...
(ECM, 1984)
With Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. He is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, due to extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians like Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and Sonny...
- The DeJohnette ComplexThe DeJohnette ComplexThe DeJohnette Complex is the debut album by Jack DeJohnette featuring Bennie Maupin, Stanley Cowell, Miroslav Vitous, Eddie Gomez, and Roy Haynes recorded in 1968 and released on the Milestone label in 1969.-Reception:...
(Milestone, 1969)
With Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...
- StARStAR (album)StAR is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, featuring Miroslav Vitous and Peter Erskine, released on the ECM label in 1991.-Reception:...
(ECM, 1991)
With Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal is a Norwegian guitarist and composer. Most of his music has been released on albums of the German record label ECM. Rypdal has collaborated both as a guitarist and as a composer with other ECM artists such as Ketil Bjørnstad and David Darling...
- Terje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnetteTerje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnetteTerje Rypdal/Miroslave Vitous/Jack DeJohnette is an album by guitarist Terje Rypdal, bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Jack DeJohnette recorded in 1978 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM, 1978) - To Be ContinuedTo Be Continued (Terje Rypdal album)To Be Continued is an album by guitarist Terje Rypdal, bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Jack DeJohnette recorded in 1981 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
(ECM, 1981)
With Sadao Watanabe
Sadao Watanabe (musician)
is an influential Japanese jazz musician who plays the alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone and flute. He is known for his Bossa Nova recordings, although his work encompasses a large range of styles with collaborations from musicians all over the world. Sadao first began learning music at the age...
- Round TripRound Trip (Sadao Watanabe album)Round Trip is a 1974 jazz album by the Japanese saxophonist Sadao Watanabe with Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Jack DeJohnette. -Track listing:#"Round Trip: Going and Coming" – 20:02#"Nostalgia" – 5:52...
(1974)