To say only that he plays bass would be misleading. As an improviser, he commands a
shocking array of effects. As a composer, he can create rigorous but liberating
frameworks for wide-open jazz on one hand and harmonica honk on the other (The
Mentones). And mainly, he hears everybody else, assimilates it all and kicks it to another
level.
Southern California bassist Liebig’s extraordinary musical range is evident in a
discography that includes four mid-’70s albums with Les McCann, a 1983 recording with
Julius Hemphill, and his ’90s recordings with such southland avant-gardeners as Vinny
Golia, The G.E. Stinson Group, John Fumo and Nels Cline, in addition to his own groups
Quartetto Stig, Kammerstig, Stigtette and The Mentones. Drawn toward composing for
chamber-type ensembles as well as to free improvising, Liebig works over his electric
contrabass in diverse instrumental contexts.
Steuart Liebig, a talented six-string bassist, turns out to be equally talented as a
composer.
Bassist Steuart Liebig, an accomplished player who specializes in the electric six-string
bass, has been circulating on the inspired, avant-jazz fringes of the Los Angeles music
scene for years.
Liebig took advantage of the fluidity of his fretless six-string bass and also managed to
avoid an artistic debt to that oft-imitated master of the instrument, the late Jaco
Pastorious.
A major concern of Steuart Liebig’s is space; acknowledging it, defining it, dividing it
up. If anyone can be funky without necessarily grooving, it’s bassist Liebig, a master of
the unexpected cosmic event.
Liebig keeps everything percolating in the center with a busy, harmonically active
electric bass foundation
Liebig is equally at home charting lunar terrain as he is in the pocket
Steuart Liebig is part of the same Southern California scene as Vinny Golia and Nels and
Alex Cline; under the contracted moniker Steubig, he was a member of Julius Hemphill’s
JAH band. Using an electric bass . . . he can coax supportive chords and quiet harmonics
from it, making it function in the implausible role of a chamber instrument.
. . . nonpareil rethinker of electric bass . . .
Steuart Liebig’s bass isn’t a bass, it’s a giant alien creature in the heaving throes of
partition