CHICK COREA TRIO - Trilogy
CONCORD JAZZ CJA-35685-02
Chick Corea (piano), Christian McBride (bass), Brian Blade (drums) plus Jorge Pardo
(flute - disc 1, tracks 5,7), Nino Josele (acoustic guitar - disc 1, tracks 5,7), Gayle Moran Corea (vocals – disc 3, track 3)
Recorded at various venues worldwide in 2010 and 2012
Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett are two of my all time piano favourites. They are both supreme masters of their game. Each is technically brilliant, but more importantly, their musical imagination knows no bounds. However, their natures could not be more different. Corea is an extrovert who is not afraid to engage in a spot of showmanship from time to time. Jarrett is a prickly introvert who suffers for his art. Showing off is anathema to him. What they do have in common is fantastic communication skills and an unparalleled eclecticism.
This 3-CD album of 17 live acoustic tracks is an embarrasement of riches. Not only is the music incredibly eclectic, but it reveals how totally at ease Corea is when communicating with his audience. Note for instance the way he engages in audience participation at the end of the inevitable “Spain”. After a series of joyful improvisations from his kicking trio, augmented by the acoustic guitar of Nino Josele and the flute of Jorge Pardo, the Spanish audience is invited to join the Latin party. Towards the end, Corea delivers a series of short, pithy phrases. The crowd listen intently and do a grand job imitating these little phrases. There is a sudden upward whooosh from the piano and this is duly mimicked. Result: instant laughter. Can you imagine Jarrett engaging in such high-jinks? Also, can you imagine Corea berating his audience for coughing, however quiet that cough might be, or storming off stage because he imagines there is a red light from a camera in the hall? Corea is an entertainer but he is an artist first and foremost. It is possible to have it both ways and Corea is living proof of this. I love Chick and I love Keith. It’s marvellous that two of the world’s greatest improvisers are so different and yet are able to communicate to the world the same eternal truths so eloquently? The message is the same. It’s just the manner of the message that is different.
Corea sends us many different musical messages in these discs. We talked about “Spain” and its Latin sensibility. Corea is one of the world’s greatest Latin players. Latin is in his blood. It’s Latin all the way again on his ever popular “Armando’s Rhumba” and Joe Henderson’s “Recorda Me”. But he is also a master of swing. Listen to his sparkling interpretation of the standard that opens the album, “You’re My Everything” and the Kern classic “The Song Is You”, both tunes full of unexpected melodic, rhythmic and harmonic twists and turns. We enter the knotty and idiosyncratic world of Monk in “Work” but Corea never sounds like Monk. Monk’s touch was heavy and brutal ( not a criticism – this was the right way for him ) but Corea’s is, as always as light as a feather. There’s more Monk, though his treatment of “Blue Monk” actually is nearer to the down-home blues of Oscar Peterson and Gene Harris than to the angularity and dissonance of the composer. Corea pays tribute to the contemporary Russian composer Alexander Scriabin in “Op.11 No.9” which is based on his Prelude in E Major. Scriabin’s work only lasts around 90 seconds but Corea’s reimagining of this beautiful miniature runs to 10.43. After the initial statement of the slow romantic theme, Corea quickens the pace and we’re into a series of improvisations in driving 3/4. These intermingle with passages of 2-chord vamps, the right hand gliding and coruscating above. This reminded me somewhat of the 2-chord trick plus right hand filigree work of Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece”, itself having echoes in Chopin’s Berceuse Op.57 in D Flat Major ( as it happens, Scriabin’s early work was greatly influenced by Chopin and so there may be a case of divine synchronisity at work here )
For me, the standout track is his “Piano Sonata:The Moon”. This has everything. There is a glorious fusion of ideas in this long work ( it clocks in at just two seconds under 30 minutes ), the music in a state of constant flux. It is by turns abstract, concrete, minimal, maximal, atonal, bitonal, polytonal, wild, dystopian, utopian, dramatic, tender, graceful, playful. It grooves, it swings. It sings, it sobs. The are echoes of Ligeti and Webern in some of the stark textures but there are also infectious, life-enhancing montunas to melt the bleakness. The whole piece is a kind of metaphor for the rollercoaster that is life itself. McBride uses both bow and finger to tell his tale. Blade’s drumming always matches the changing moods of the composition, sometimes quiet and tender, other times demonically explosive.
It would have been great to end the album on “The Moon”. As it happens, we come back to earth with a bit of a bump with the last number. For me, this is the weakest track of the album. Corea’s wife, Gayle Moran did some wondrous things on his 70’s fusion albums such as The Leprechaun and My Spanish Heart and her ethereal singing on Mahavishnu’s Apocalyse still tugs at my heart. Her voice doesn’t really lend itself to The Great American Songbook though. A lower key would have helped a little in “Some Day My Prince Will Come”. Maybe I am being too critical and maybe I should heed Chick’s words that accompany the discs: “If jazz is an expression of life, then perfection is certainly not the end goal – life is lived from too many viewpoints to be able to have perfection. If you win every time you play, doesn’t it get boring?” Quite true! Who should deny Gayle the right to pay tribute to her own very special Prince of Lightness in her own special way?
Reviewed by Geoff Eales
CONCORD JAZZ CJA-35685-02
Chick Corea (piano), Christian McBride (bass), Brian Blade (drums) plus Jorge Pardo
(flute - disc 1, tracks 5,7), Nino Josele (acoustic guitar - disc 1, tracks 5,7), Gayle Moran Corea (vocals – disc 3, track 3)
Recorded at various venues worldwide in 2010 and 2012
Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett are two of my all time piano favourites. They are both supreme masters of their game. Each is technically brilliant, but more importantly, their musical imagination knows no bounds. However, their natures could not be more different. Corea is an extrovert who is not afraid to engage in a spot of showmanship from time to time. Jarrett is a prickly introvert who suffers for his art. Showing off is anathema to him. What they do have in common is fantastic communication skills and an unparalleled eclecticism.
This 3-CD album of 17 live acoustic tracks is an embarrasement of riches. Not only is the music incredibly eclectic, but it reveals how totally at ease Corea is when communicating with his audience. Note for instance the way he engages in audience participation at the end of the inevitable “Spain”. After a series of joyful improvisations from his kicking trio, augmented by the acoustic guitar of Nino Josele and the flute of Jorge Pardo, the Spanish audience is invited to join the Latin party. Towards the end, Corea delivers a series of short, pithy phrases. The crowd listen intently and do a grand job imitating these little phrases. There is a sudden upward whooosh from the piano and this is duly mimicked. Result: instant laughter. Can you imagine Jarrett engaging in such high-jinks? Also, can you imagine Corea berating his audience for coughing, however quiet that cough might be, or storming off stage because he imagines there is a red light from a camera in the hall? Corea is an entertainer but he is an artist first and foremost. It is possible to have it both ways and Corea is living proof of this. I love Chick and I love Keith. It’s marvellous that two of the world’s greatest improvisers are so different and yet are able to communicate to the world the same eternal truths so eloquently? The message is the same. It’s just the manner of the message that is different.
Corea sends us many different musical messages in these discs. We talked about “Spain” and its Latin sensibility. Corea is one of the world’s greatest Latin players. Latin is in his blood. It’s Latin all the way again on his ever popular “Armando’s Rhumba” and Joe Henderson’s “Recorda Me”. But he is also a master of swing. Listen to his sparkling interpretation of the standard that opens the album, “You’re My Everything” and the Kern classic “The Song Is You”, both tunes full of unexpected melodic, rhythmic and harmonic twists and turns. We enter the knotty and idiosyncratic world of Monk in “Work” but Corea never sounds like Monk. Monk’s touch was heavy and brutal ( not a criticism – this was the right way for him ) but Corea’s is, as always as light as a feather. There’s more Monk, though his treatment of “Blue Monk” actually is nearer to the down-home blues of Oscar Peterson and Gene Harris than to the angularity and dissonance of the composer. Corea pays tribute to the contemporary Russian composer Alexander Scriabin in “Op.11 No.9” which is based on his Prelude in E Major. Scriabin’s work only lasts around 90 seconds but Corea’s reimagining of this beautiful miniature runs to 10.43. After the initial statement of the slow romantic theme, Corea quickens the pace and we’re into a series of improvisations in driving 3/4. These intermingle with passages of 2-chord vamps, the right hand gliding and coruscating above. This reminded me somewhat of the 2-chord trick plus right hand filigree work of Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece”, itself having echoes in Chopin’s Berceuse Op.57 in D Flat Major ( as it happens, Scriabin’s early work was greatly influenced by Chopin and so there may be a case of divine synchronisity at work here )
For me, the standout track is his “Piano Sonata:The Moon”. This has everything. There is a glorious fusion of ideas in this long work ( it clocks in at just two seconds under 30 minutes ), the music in a state of constant flux. It is by turns abstract, concrete, minimal, maximal, atonal, bitonal, polytonal, wild, dystopian, utopian, dramatic, tender, graceful, playful. It grooves, it swings. It sings, it sobs. The are echoes of Ligeti and Webern in some of the stark textures but there are also infectious, life-enhancing montunas to melt the bleakness. The whole piece is a kind of metaphor for the rollercoaster that is life itself. McBride uses both bow and finger to tell his tale. Blade’s drumming always matches the changing moods of the composition, sometimes quiet and tender, other times demonically explosive.
It would have been great to end the album on “The Moon”. As it happens, we come back to earth with a bit of a bump with the last number. For me, this is the weakest track of the album. Corea’s wife, Gayle Moran did some wondrous things on his 70’s fusion albums such as The Leprechaun and My Spanish Heart and her ethereal singing on Mahavishnu’s Apocalyse still tugs at my heart. Her voice doesn’t really lend itself to The Great American Songbook though. A lower key would have helped a little in “Some Day My Prince Will Come”. Maybe I am being too critical and maybe I should heed Chick’s words that accompany the discs: “If jazz is an expression of life, then perfection is certainly not the end goal – life is lived from too many viewpoints to be able to have perfection. If you win every time you play, doesn’t it get boring?” Quite true! Who should deny Gayle the right to pay tribute to her own very special Prince of Lightness in her own special way?
Reviewed by Geoff Eales
