The hexagram of the heavens, the strings of my guitar – Joni, Jaco, Rumer and more
It wasn’t as much an interview this week as an informal chat via Zoom with someone that I have become increasingly curious about in recent times, the jazz, funk and session bass guitarist Stefan Redtenbacher.
So beaming out from the screen at lunchtime on Thursday from his studio base in Guildford and preparing to participate in the backing band at the Zildjian Young Drummer contest at the Lighthouse in Poole this weekend was the man himself Redtenbacher who had bunkered down to do some writing.
Redtenbacher, a 56 year old Austrian who lives in England, has laid down a phenomenal amount of work with a whole range of luminaries down the years.
A quick glance at his bandcamp page tells part of the prodigious story.
“I’m simply a bass player with ideas beyond those twenty frets. My world rotates around three pillars – music, education and technology, sometimes in parallel and sometimes in isolation, always with a good dash of entrepreneurship. Most importantly it’s always about creativity.”
Stefan Redtenbacher, quoted on his own website
There are some two dozen recordings made just in the last three years recorded at the Masterlink studio – the sessions are a venture he has established with Guildford studio owner James Welch.
His superb In Session collaboration with Rumer emanated from a Joni Mitchell project he recorded when he asked a number of singers to name their favourite Joni song and record with his group of musicians the Funkestra.
Full of picture post card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm – Joni Mitchell
Hers, he says was 1976 Hejira song ‘Amelia’ a song that intertwines a desert journey with the story of the pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart who with her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared in 1937 during a flight over the Pacific Ocean. Their version together works marvellously. Rumer’s soft, poetic voice riding the crest of the understated jazz rock and Americana flecked groove.
Both Sides Now: Joni Reimagined came out a couple of years ago and also featured Sarah Jane Morris, Hamish Stuart, Jo Harman and Mim Grey who is a revelation in this context.
We chat about his main bass influences and he enthuses about Jaco Pastorius – seeing the great Weather Report icon in Austria – and as for drummers tells me he’s in awe of the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet drummer Tony Williams and more surprisingly Oscar Peterson’s drummer, Ed Thigpen.
On his website he writes: “My own relation to Joni’s music came via titanic bassist Jaco Pastorius and in the 80s I was listening to Shadows and Light, Mingus and Hejira. Maybe bizarrely I’ve never connected with Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (yet). Aside from Blue… a go-to album for my wife for her entire life, I’ve discovered another Joni live album (How could I have missed this – hold on – in 80s Austria it was a little harder to come by music of this kind) Miles of Aisles.”
Stefan studied at the Vienna Conservatory, Berklee College of Music and elsewhere. He wears many hats: as a bassist, guitarist, composer, bandleader, arranger, educator, producer, music-software developer, and “intrepid captain of the groove ship” Funkestra.
Stefan bought his first bass as a 14 year old and has lived beyond his native Austria in Paris, France, Spain, the US and the UK where his band Redtenbacher’s Funkestra was born.
He has recorded and performed with Steve Winwood, Jack Bruce, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, Lulu, Mica Paris, Herb Alpert, Paul Carrack, Kiki Dee, Tony Hatch, Gerry Beckley, Sandie Shaw, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Limahl, Alexandra Burke and many more.
The Funkestra as the name partly suggests play instrumental jazz funk and began in 2005. Check out this Always Getting Better podcast he did with Tim Love recently.
Stefan’s Joni Reimagined quartet – in which he’s with singer Jana Varga, keyboardist Pete Billington and drummer Mike Sturgis – plays the Pheasantry in Chelsea on 26 March among a raft of dates next month.
- Read a review of In session
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