Robert
November 23rd, 2007, 04:45 PM
A master piano player - Chick Corea - is coming to Edmonton tomorrow, and I just got a ticket to the show! I am really looking forward to this.
Here's a clip where Chick plays one of my favorite tunes, which also happens to be the inspiration for the name of my personal website! :)
9NeIj1NwKvA
In a career that spans more than four decades and many, many recordings Grammy Award winner Corea has led just about every kind of project imaginable from acoustic trios to electric fusion bands like Return To Forever. He helped pioneer the solo piano session and has forged duos with Gary Burton and Bobby McFerrin (and recently with Bela Fleck on a CD called The Enchantment). He's dipped his fingers into traditional jazz, the avant- garde, and maintains a strong passion for Latin sounds, while he's taken his synthesizers on trips into space-based fantasy suites modelled after the fiction of L.Ron Hubbard.
Beyond jazz altogether are his own piano concertos, performed with symphony orchestras, and his occasional forays into Mozart and Beethoven.
"I've never bothered to name what I do, and actually the way I play with so many different musical partners the categories kind of become meaningless. In the sense of context, I really do like variety, like this intimate duet I have going with Bela Fleck. But recently I wrote a second piano concerto and did a European tour with a 30-piece chamber ensemble. I know I'm going to enjoy the new quartet with Eddie and Airto and Hubert."
That's his new Freedom Band, an all-acoustic quartet featuring past collaborators Eddie Gomez on bass and drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira with an old friend but new musical associate flautist Hubert Laws. The band plays its first two dates ever in Edmonton and Calgary this weekend, though it was actually inspired by a trio concert Corea did last year with Gomez and Moreira.
As it turns the "Freedom Band" is simply Corea's catch-all for new projects he hasn't dubbed otherwise, but their collective talents suggest it will be an occasion for virtuoso music-making.
Growing up around Boston, Mass., Corea started piano at age four and even played drums briefly before making his professional debut with Cab Calloway. Subsequent work with Latin percussionist Mongo Santamaria left a deeper impression, as did various other Latin bandleaders of the day. (Corea's bloodlines are not Spanish, as many assume, but Italian.) When it comes to jazz, Corea credits pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk as inspiring him to search for his own musical identity.
Here's a clip where Chick plays one of my favorite tunes, which also happens to be the inspiration for the name of my personal website! :)
9NeIj1NwKvA
In a career that spans more than four decades and many, many recordings Grammy Award winner Corea has led just about every kind of project imaginable from acoustic trios to electric fusion bands like Return To Forever. He helped pioneer the solo piano session and has forged duos with Gary Burton and Bobby McFerrin (and recently with Bela Fleck on a CD called The Enchantment). He's dipped his fingers into traditional jazz, the avant- garde, and maintains a strong passion for Latin sounds, while he's taken his synthesizers on trips into space-based fantasy suites modelled after the fiction of L.Ron Hubbard.
Beyond jazz altogether are his own piano concertos, performed with symphony orchestras, and his occasional forays into Mozart and Beethoven.
"I've never bothered to name what I do, and actually the way I play with so many different musical partners the categories kind of become meaningless. In the sense of context, I really do like variety, like this intimate duet I have going with Bela Fleck. But recently I wrote a second piano concerto and did a European tour with a 30-piece chamber ensemble. I know I'm going to enjoy the new quartet with Eddie and Airto and Hubert."
That's his new Freedom Band, an all-acoustic quartet featuring past collaborators Eddie Gomez on bass and drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira with an old friend but new musical associate flautist Hubert Laws. The band plays its first two dates ever in Edmonton and Calgary this weekend, though it was actually inspired by a trio concert Corea did last year with Gomez and Moreira.
As it turns the "Freedom Band" is simply Corea's catch-all for new projects he hasn't dubbed otherwise, but their collective talents suggest it will be an occasion for virtuoso music-making.
Growing up around Boston, Mass., Corea started piano at age four and even played drums briefly before making his professional debut with Cab Calloway. Subsequent work with Latin percussionist Mongo Santamaria left a deeper impression, as did various other Latin bandleaders of the day. (Corea's bloodlines are not Spanish, as many assume, but Italian.) When it comes to jazz, Corea credits pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk as inspiring him to search for his own musical identity.