Reto Weber

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Reto Weber (born August 20, 1953 in Solothurn ) is a Swiss percussionist .

person

Weber began playing drums in a school band at the age of 14 and then played in various beat music , blues and even jazz groups . He studied contemporary percussion in Basel . Since 1973 he has given solo concerts as a drummer and increasingly occupied himself with percussion in non-European musical cultures. In addition, between 1976 and 2000 he played countless concerts worldwide with the Swiss computer pioneer and saxophonist Bruno Spoerri . Recordings such as The Sound ot the Ufos (Gold records) or Controlled Risk ( Konnex Records ) bear witness to this . In the eighties Spoerri and Weber were together with Albert Mangelsdorff and Christy Doran as Movin 'On and released the album Shake Shuttle and Blow (Enja Records).

In 1978 he founded his percussion orchestra together with the Ghanaian Nana Twum Nketia and the Iranian Djamchid Chemirani . Muthuswamy Balasubramoniam, Adama Dramé , Mustapha Tettey Addy , and Dom Um Romao belonged to this group at times ; the group also toured with wind players such as Albert Mangelsdorff, Chico Freeman or Franco Ambrosetti as well as with the Phong Lan Orchestra Hanoi . Various CDs document his work. The Percussion Orchestra toured worldwide for over 25 years and played at festivals in Jakarta, Chicago, Montreux, Berlin, Paris, Dakar, Havana, SaoPaulo, Johannesburg, Tokyo and Hong Kong, among others. It "thrilled with its only superficially esoteric sound variety."

Weber also worked with Albert Mangelsdorff in other contexts for many years; so he played in the group movin on with Mangelsdorff, Bruno Spoerri and Ernst Reijseger or Christy Doran , or with Albert Mangelsdorff also in a duo, then in a trio with Eberhard Weber. In 2004 he founded the Squeeze Band with young musicians , with whom he regularly performs. He was also on the road in a trio with Eberhard Weber and Enrico Rava . He continued to perform with musicians such as Dave Holland , Marion Brown , Trevor Watts , Toto Blanke .

After Albert Mangelsdorff's death in 2005, the trio work with Eberhard Weber and Enrico Rava was continued. This until Eberhard Weber`s stroke in 2007.

His current formation Squeezeband is made up of Chico Freeman, Christy Doran, Nino G., Michel Alibo / Heiri Känzig Rodrigo Rodriguez u. a. In addition to numerous solo concerts, he also appears in a duo with Jasper van't Hof and in Chico Freeman's Exotica Trio with the Swedish cellist Svante Henryson. Weber has been working as a duo with Jasper vant Hof since 2015 and released the CD Featuring in 2018 . From 2015 Weber was active in the group of Chico Freeman Plustett with Kenny Davis, Ernie Adams, Antonio Farao and Chico Freeman.

Weber was regularly elected to the winner polls of the Jazz Forum . He is also recognized as an interpreter of classical music, for example through the world premiere of the Scenes pour percussion et orchestre by Jörg Iwer . He taught at the Swiss School in Bern and gives workshops and school concerts.

Reto Weber was involved in the creation of the Hang sound sculpture: In November 1999, he retuned his Steel Pan . When he picked up the newly tuned steelpan, he brought a ghatam (Indian percussion instrument) with him at the request of the instrument makers Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer and demonstrated the instrument. He expressed the wish to have such a percussion instrument with different tones or in different pitches. Rohner and Schärer then took out two Steel Pan half-shells that Schärer had previously tuned and put them together. The Hang was developed from this prototype.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shake, Shuttle and Blow - Albert Mangelsdorff, Movin 'On | Release info. Retrieved January 13, 2019 (American English).
  2. ↑ Wolf Kampmann (ed.), With the assistance of Ekkehard Jost : Reclams Jazzlexikon . Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010528-5 , p. 545.
  3. ↑ ...: Hang - a new musical instrument - a brand - many misunderstandings. Retrieved October 30, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Reto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss percussionist
DATE OF BIRTH 20th August 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Solothurn