Although Tim Weisberg is considered one of the greatest contemporary jazz-fusion flute players of all time, his music is actually much more expansive than that, taking in elements of pop, rock and progressive sounds. His remarkable musicianship hasn’t been confined to his own work. Discovered by legendary trumpeter Herb Alpert, who released his early work via his A&M Records, Weisberg has been a session man for numerous artists, including The Carpenters, The Monkees, Dave Mason and Herbie Hancock. But perhaps his best-known work is his collaborations with Dan Fogelberg, which yielded the hit song “The Power of Gold,” hitting No. 24 in 1978. Weisberg is no stranger to San Diego, having performed at numerous venues in town since the 1970s from SDSU’s Backdoor to Anthology. “San Diego was the first place I remember (making an impact) after my first album came out,” Weisberg recalled. “Herb Alpert told me,‘You’ve got a following down there!’ I think I was accepted as a performer in San Diego before the rest of the nation.”
Appearing at Dizzy’s on Saturday, Sept. 13, Weisberg has released 22 albums to date, though he hasn’t issued new music since “Time Traveler” in 1999. His reasons are succinct. “The problem was that [labels] were offering deals, but the kind of music that they wanted me to perform was something that I would not find satisfying,” Weisberg said. “One way to look at it is that maybe I was spoiled during my career up to that point.
“I really recorded things that made me feel something emotionally,” he said. “Whether they were somebody else’s songs to me was kind of immaterial, but I had to feel something for it. Then I could approach it with that emotion and get the kind of performance that other people would enjoy. When it ceased being that, I just didn’t want to do it.” Weisberg soon took a hiatus from performing for several years, rekindling his love of playing live with a show at the defunct downtown San Diego club Anthology in 2010. “Basically, I just started getting dates together after that, I just kind of put a tip-toe into it,” he said. For this show, he will be joined by guitarist Chuck Alvarez, keyboardist Barnaby Finch, bassist David Hughes and drummer Maria Martinez. “They’re all really great players,” Weisberg said. “Sometimes I’m up there and I just step back and go, ‘Wow!’ I forget I’m the leader, and it’s like, I hope I can take a solo after that.” Ironically, Weisberg became a flute player by happenstance. Attending the first day of music class at school, students, in alphabetical order, were allowed to pick an instrument. “Harry Abrams got what he wanted, Constance got what she wanted. I was last in the class,” he joked. “I had the choice between bassoon and flute. I went with the flute because it was smaller and easy to carry.”
With more than four decades of making music behind him, its clear Weisberg still enjoys being on stage as much as ever. “I love the interaction with the audience,” he said. “I’m still astounded and in awe of the power of music. And it gets reinforced now that my hiatus is over and I’m back to performing. People come up and they say, ‘I saw you 25 years ago,’ or they tell me a story about their first date or when they got married and my music played. It’s almost kind of a magic; not my magic specifically, but a process.
“It’s another reason why I practice every day, to be in the best form to be able to do that,” he said. “It still blows me away.”
• TIM WEISBERG: Saturday, Sept. 13, at DIZZY’S, 4275 Mission Bay Drive. 8 p.m. $20. www.dizzysjazz.com.
