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ON THE COVER
In accepting one of two Grammys this past February
for his work with vibraphonist Gary Burton on Hot
House (Concord), pianist Chick Corea gave an
impromptu salute to musicians everywhere. “I know
that we all have the same intention, which is to bring
pleasure and beauty to people around the world,” he
said. This intention continues to motivate Corea well
into his fourth decade as a solo artist and bandleader:
Corea, now 72, tours relentlessly throughout the US
and abroad, performing in all manner of venues, with
all manner of musicians. This month that touring
brings him to New York City for a festival in his honor
at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC).
Corea and JALC Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis
have known each other for years - with a total of almost
30 Grammys between them, the pianist and trumpeter
are two of the most prolific jazz players around - but
they hadn’t worked together until 2011, when Marsalis
invited Corea to play three nights at JALC’s Rose Hall.
Marsalis wrote some arrangements of Corea’s tunes,
Corea rehearsed for a bit with the JALC Orchestra and
the resultant performances transformed their
relationship from one of mutual admiration to one of
powerful collaboration. Corea and Marsalis agreed
that they’d have to do it again.
This time Marsalis added two nights to the run
and asked Corea to curate the performances on the
other stages at JALC, all of which would be booked
with prominent players who’d been brought up on
Corea’s music. “I had to look the word [curate] up in
the dictionary,” joked Corea, who agreed to select the
participating musicians. When the plan took form it
looked like this: Corea would perform Marsalis’
arrangements of Corea’s compositions with the JALC
Orchestra for three evenings in Rose Hall; five
bandleaders hand-picked by Corea would play across
five evenings in Dizzy’s Club and two of Corea’s
young protégés would play with some more
experienced instrumentalists in a program called
“Friends of Chick Corea: Musicians of the Future” in
the Allen Room. The visiting ensembles would perform
their own Corea-inspired works along with
arrangements of one or two Corea tunes.
Corea, who’s produced a staggering array of
traditional jazz, fusion, avant garde and symphonic
compositions over the last nearly 50 years, took a
decidedly hands-off approach to the repertoire for the
festival. “I didn’t want to have to choose the material
for the artists to perform,” Corea asserted. “These
young musicians are in a thorough mode of creativity…
and I didn’t want to interrupt it by saying ‘do this, do
that.’ The idea was that each group might choose a
Chick Corea tune that they might like to play. Even if
they all chose the same tune they’d play incredibly
different renditions. [But] they’re making choices
pretty far afield from what would be considered the
standard tunes, like ‘Spain’.”
Corea’s willingness to grant the participants so
much creative autonomy reflects the appreciation he
feels for the next generation of musicians. He admires
their confidence, he says, their technical brilliance,
CHICK COREA
CREATING FREEDOM
by Suzanne Lorge
their expressiveness. “What’s coming out [of these
musicians] is so uninhibited that it bubbles with light,”
he says. “…That freedom to create…that’s something
that every artist, no matter what his age, strives for all
the time.”
Of course, the artists involved might well say that
the very qualities that Corea admires in them are part
of his legacy to the jazz world. “His music, virtuosic
skill, incredible compositional skills - how do you even
talk about it?” asks pianist Edsel Gomez, who opens
the lineup at Dizzy’s Club with his Cubist Music Band.
Puerto Rican-born Gomez first met Corea in the mid
‘80s, when Corea was visiting Berklee School of Music
in Boston and selected Gomez, a student then, to play
in his band. “He influences everybody. He’s influenced
everything I do, even [music] that has nothing to do
with jazz.”
Outside the US Corea’s influence on young
musicians was no less pronounced - even in Cuba,
where jazz was banned during the ‘80s-90s. Bandleader
Elio Villafranca was studying percussion and classical
composition in a state-run program in Havana during
those years, sometimes spending half of his monthly
income on the black-market cassettes he needed to
make copies of Corea’s albums. “It was a conscious
decision, [to be] hungry that month, but then we would
listen to really great music,” Villafranca says. “That’s
what Chick is to me. That moment when you have to
make a choice, whether you really want to be a
musician, to make that sacrifice…to get where you
want to go.” Villafranca and Corea didn’t meet in
person until three years ago, the same year that
Villafranca received a Grammy nomination for Best
Latin Jazz album. Corea had come to hear him and his
septet, the Jass Syncopators, at Dizzy’s Club and after
the gig the two pianists chatted late into the night.
The youngest participants in the Festival are piano
prodigies Gadi Lehavi from Israel and Beka
Gochiashvili from Tbilisi, Georgia, both of whom just
turned 17. Corea had first heard of the gifted teenagers
from other musicians: drummer Lenny White told
Corea about the 11-year-old Gochiashvili in 2007, two
years before the pianist became the youngest winner of
the Montreux Jazz Competition, and saxophonist Ravi
Coltrane had met Lehavi during a trip to Israel in 2009
and passed one of his recordings on to Corea. Corea
struck up a mentorship with each of the boys, offering
them performing advice and helping to launch their
international careers. Both have visited Corea’s Florida
home and recorded duets with him there. Especially
helpful, says Lehavi, has been Corea’s guidance on
composing. “Chick told me to write something every
day and not worry so much, to have fun,” he says. “He
wants people to have their own voice come out
naturally.” Lehavi will play some of his mentored
compositions in the Allen Room gig, where both of the
young artists will perform with Grammy-winning
bassist John Patitucci, trumpeter Wallace Roney and
drummer Marcus Gilmore.
For his three days of performances with the JALC
Orchestra, Corea says that Marsalis is revising some
existing arrangements of Corea’s work and preparing
some new charts; though he can’t confirm the specifics,
Corea reports that Marsalis called an extra day of
rehearsal in May to work through the new material.
“And I’m going to bring in some ideas,” Corea says,
adding, “I wish I’d have had time to write something
brand new myself, but I’ve been on the road touring so
constantly these past six months that I haven’t had the
chance.”
Corea admits that touring cuts into the time that
he’d like to devote to new projects. To address this lack
Corea has formed his own band - The Vigil, a quintet
that mixes electric and acoustic instruments in a
distinctly different jazz sound. “I’ve been wanting to
do this [group] for five, six, seven years,” says Corea,
“because there’s a part of my musical output that I was
missing, which is writing, composing, arranging and
putting it all together. Having a band like [The Vigil] is
like having a palette to explore ideas of how to present
music.”
Corea and The Vigil - bassist Hadrien Feraud,
guitarist Charles Altura, saxophonist Tim Garland and
drummer Marcus Gilmore - have already started
performing in the US and after the JALC Festival,
Corea will tour with them throughout Europe and Asia
during the summer and early fall. In addition to his
Vigil performances, Corea has multiple bookings with
bassist Stanley Clarke and banjo player Béla Fleck,
some solo gigs and one-offs with pianist Herbie
Hancock and vocalist Bobby McFerrin scheduled for
the latter part of 2013; all told, by the time Corea wraps
up The Vigil tour he will have spent the better part of a
year on the road.
Corea has controls in place to manage the
arduousness of touring - he wants to be at his best on
stage. The important thing, after all, is fulfilling the
intention that he mentioned in his Grammy speech.
“I like it when someone in an audience will be able to
feel…the joy we get out of making music on stage,” he
says. “That’s why I love live performance. The
message…of most musicians and artists is the
freedom…to be. It shouldn’t be underestimated how
important that is.”v
For more information, visit chickcorea.com. Corea is at Rose
Hall May 16th-18th with the JALC Orchestra. The Chick
Corea Festival is at Allen Room May 17th-18th and Dizzy’s
Club May 15th-19th. See calendar.
Recommended Listening:
• Chick Corea - Now He Sings, Now He Sobs
(Solid State-Blue Note, 1968)
• Miles Davis - Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series
(Legacy Recordings, 1969)
• Gary Burton/Chick Corea - Crystal Silence
(ECM, 1972)
• Chick Corea - Remembering Bud Powell (Stretch, 1997)
• Chick Corea - Rendezvous in New York
(Stretch-Concord, 2001)
• Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian -
Further Explorations (Concord, 2010)
THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | May 2013 9
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