Below are embedded five great episodes of the most finest jazz fusion jam by the one and only legendary, innovative, technical, and creative American bassist Jaco Pastorius at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, California in 1985. These jams are quite rare and they were uploaded on Youtube courtesy of the channel Patrick Buchmann Sdinganuff Musick.
Image source: Jaco Pastorius live at the Musicians Institute in 1985. Image source: www.youtube.com
Known for his excellent musical activity in the legendary jazz rock/jazz fusion band Weather Report between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jaco Pastorius left the group co-fronted by keyboardist Josef ‘Joe’ Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter in 1982 due to creative differences and other reasons to pursue a solo career and focus on other side projects. During this year, Jaco recorded ‘Invitation’ with his band, a great jazz fusion live album.
As jamming is essentially improvisation and the secret to jazz (fusion as well) relies in a great improvisation, the fantastic musical genius of Jaco (along with his sincere and nice personality) can be seen on stage in the following rare and great live performances from the Musicians Institute (a private for-profit music school/college established in Los Angels, California in 1977) in 1985.
The following jam episodes constitute the series ‘Hidden Treasures’, which showcase these great and rare live performances of Jaco in 1985. While on stage, before performing live, Jaco answers some questions by the press on creating music and the music industry. Afterwards, he proceeded to jamming with Musicians Institute teachers Frank Gambale (guitar) and Patrick Buchmann (drums). John Hathorn was the cameraman. All the following live performances were taken from VHS cassettes on which they were initially recorded.
Therefore, that being said and without any further needless ado on my behalf, I wholeheartedly recommend integrally watching the following great live performances by the one and only jazz fusion maestro Jaco Pastorius:
- The description of these videos on Youtube
- More on this live performances from the official website of Musicians Institute (MI)