Both were already making some serious noise, together and individually. Two other members of Mainieri's musical commune were the brothers Breckertrumpeter Randy Brecker and younger sibling, saxophonist Michael Brecker. " surrounded by rock and folk musicians." Coming together at a farm owned by Mainieri, this musical collectiveincluding keyboardist Warren Bernhardt, bassist Tony Levin, drummer Steve Gadd and guitarist, Joe Beck and David Spinozzareleased one album, White Elephant (Just Sunshine, 1972), before largely imploding out of necessity, really, due to its sheer size, as musicians got involved in other projects and just plain moved on from the hippie movement that was already beginning to dissolve. As the vibraphonist explained in a 2009 All About Jazz interview, they were. Beginning in the late '60s, a collective of roughly 30 musicians moved from New York to Woodstock, including Mike Mainieri, the oldest of the bunch, already (shudder) in his early thirties. Parallel to that, Weather Report began life as a more avant-tinged version of fusion, where the form was often free and, rather than relying on testerone-filled solos, operated in a sphere where, as keyboardist Joe Zawinul said, "Everybody solos, and nobody solos." Even when Weather Report began moving towards more groove-centric music with Sweetnighter (Columbia, 1973), freedom was still a fundamental, though by the time the group hit its biggest stride with Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977), the group had morphed into one where form was paramount, even though interpretive collective soloing still took place within its more rigid constructs.īut in a certain part of Manhattan, something else was going on. When fusion first emerged in the late 1960s/early '70s with artists like trumpeter Miles Davis, pianist Chick Corea and guitarist John McLaughlin, the emphasis was on guitar and keyboard heavy lineups like Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra, with an equally strong predilection for the intensity and volume of rock and a kind of thundering funk that was different than the kind of music coming from R&B and soul artists like Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire.
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