Eberhard Weber. Photo credit: Nadia Romanini/ECM

Details of a Gala Concert for bassist/ composer Eberhard Weber‘s 75th Birthday Concert have been announced at a press conference in Stuttgart today.

The gala will take place over two nights, January 23rd and 24th 2015, with the same programme being performed twice. At the first concert, the Land of Baden-Wuerttemberg will also be awarding Weber a Special Prize to honour his lifetime’s work and his huge worldwide influence. Weber himself has been unable to play since suffering a stroke in 2007.

The line-up which has been assembled is phenomenal: Pat Metheny, Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, Gary Burton, Michael Gibbs, Danny Gottlieb, Scott Colley, Paul McCandless 

CONCERT PROGRAMME:

– The first half of the concert will feature re-interpretations of Eberhard Weber’s compositions, with soloists Gary Burton, Ralph Towner, Jan Garbarek, Danny Gottlieb and Scott Colley, with the SWR Big Band .The arrangers are Baden-Württemberg jazz composers, Steffen Schorn, Rainer Tempel, Libor Sima, Ralf Schmid. There is also also an arrangement in the first half by by Michael Gibbs.

– The second half of the concert has been conceived by Pat Metheny, who has built a new major work to be premiered around extant video footage of Eberhard Weber playing solo, and worked this into a composition. The video footage of Weber himself playing will be back-projected.

FURTHER INFORMATION: we will shortly be publishing an interview with the project’s director Martin Mühleis of Sagas. The full press release in German is HERE