Like its 2012 predecessor, Resume, this is a collection of new pieces from old ones by the German composer and former bassist Eberhard Weber - reworkings of his unique improvisations with Jan Garbarek’s band between 1990 and 2007, before a stroke ended his bass-playing career. Michael DiPasqua played drums and Garbarek himself added flute and sax parts to Resume, which gave that album a controlled urgency less evident in the lustrously-textured Encore. Flugelhornist Ack van Rooyen (Weber’s only partner here) is a tellingly ghostly presence, however - and a very significant one, having played on Weber’s groundbreaking The Colours of Chloe 42 years ago, and reappearing on what the composer feels may be his last album. Weber’s inimitable electric-bass sound, at times resembling a sitar, at times an amplified cello or a tuba, establishes a flamenco-like feel over the groove of Cambridge, a slow Caribbean lilt on Rankweil or Hannover (all twelve short pieces are named after locations the solos were played at), a spacey and cinematic mood on Sevilla, a rhythmic throb over an accordion-like dance on Pamplona. Encore is often as wistfully reflective as might be expected from the circumstances of its creation, but a thoughtful composer’s sensibility directed Weber’s work as both an improviser and a leader from the beginning - in these imaginative reconstructions, it still does.
