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Caught
Corea, McLaughlin’s
Five Peace Band Stirs
Up Fusion Onslaught
Tending to old and new alliances has been part
of jazz since the music began, as musicians filter
in an out of projects. Still, some connections can
strain expectations and stereotypes of what fits
where in the music. Take, for instance, the Five
Peace Band, a short-term group uniting pioneering
jazz-rock fusion architects guitarist John
McLaughlin and keyboardist Chick Corea. The
band breezed through tours of Europe and elsewhere,
and played the United States this spring,
stopping at Royce Hall at the University of
California, Los Angeles on March 19.
For anyone who has followed these two jazz
titans, from their brief hook-up in Miles Davis’
early electric group in the late ’60s through their
diversified projects, the sight and sound of these
two disparate legends together was logical and a
bit disarming. All these decades, they have been
the friendliest of “rivals,” on either side of the
fusion aisle. Named after a McLaughlin tune
(which this band doesn’t play), the Five Peace
Band warrants all-star status, considering a lineup
fortified with bassist Christian McBride, alto
saxophonist Kenny Garrett (who, like the leaders,
is a Davis band alumnus) and drummer
Vinnie Colaiuta (for dates Colaiuta missed, the
drum chair was filled by Brian Blade, who no
doubt brought a different pulse to the band).
At Royce Hall, the band navigated through a
feisty post-fusion blowing fest, but with enough
solidity and interplay to give the show bone
structure and present a persona worth pursuing
further.
As the chief instigator, Corea supplied the
Chick Corea (left) and John McLaughlin
band’s two new originals. “The Disguise” is a
moody samba-flavored piece, which the band
deftly handled. By contrast, Corea’s extended
suite “Hymn To Andromeda” took up much of
the concert’s second half, basking in a sense of
an epic sweep, from Corea’s impressive,
abstracted piano solo intro through rounds of
intricate tutti lines, emotional shifts and a volcanic,
John Coltrane-colored solo by Garrett.
Other material was culled from McLaughlin’s
recent albums, the latter-day chapter in the
67-year-old guitar hero’s revived fusion history.
“Raju,” from last year’s inspired Indo-fusion
album Floating Point, opened the show in fervent
form, with the guitarist showing supple
phrasing and expressive command. All night,
McLaughlin, deploying an edgy guitar tone,
spun out his signature spidery flurries, yet
always graced with touches of expressive filigree,
including phrase-ending nuances on the
whammy bar and his natural, breathy sense of
phrasing.
From McLaughlin’s underrated 2006 return
to fusion form, Industrial Zen, the fast-slow,
hubristic-sensuous Latin pulse of “Señor C.S.”
gave the band a ripe, rewarding workout.
McLaughlin’s fractured, odd-metered “New
Blues Old Bruise,” also from Industrial Zen,
was one of the guitarist’s deceptive variations on
the blues theme. A fusiony shuffle was folded
into a compound meter, but was still somehow
soulful in McLaughlin’s brainiac way. Colaiuta,
who loves a good metric challenge, seized the
occasion to play a solo of articulate thunder.
Beyond the leaders’ songbooks, Jackie
McLean’s hard-bop classic “Dr. Jackle” ushered
more conventional jazz energies into the set, providing
fodder for McBride’s dynamic acoustic
bass solo. The band returned to the stage for a
collective history-dipping encore of themes and
riffs from Davis’ In A Silent Way—the point, 40
years ago, when McLaughlin and Corea musically
met. They offered a pocket-sized abridged version,
a warm but short bath of nostalgia for “two
old hippies” (McLaughlin’s joking term) who
altered the course of music and are still coaxing
artistic worth from the “f-word” genre they
helped create.
—Josef Woodard
EARL GIBSON
JACK VARTOOGIAN/FRONTROWPHOTOS
Charles Tolliver
Tolliver Re-creates Orchestral Monk
In the opening night of a Thelonious Monk tribute
at New York’s Town Hall on Feb. 26, conductor
Charles Tolliver revisited the historic tentet
orchestral debut of the pianist/bandleader that
took place a half-century earlier. That concert
was released as The Thelonious Monk Orchestra
At Town Hall. Tolliver himself attended the
1959 concert as a teenager. Ancient history
Hardly.
Duke University commissioned Tolliver to
re-create Hall Overton’s original arrangements
and assemble a 10-piece orchestra to mirror the
original show. That included the opening solo
performance, with pianist Stanley Cowell’s tumbles
and whorls through “In Walked Bud,” a trio
tune (“Blue Monk”), then a quartet number
(“Rhythm-A-Ning”), as well as the orchestral
encore of “Little Rootie Tootie.” That piece
appeared in the original performance because
Monk missed the signal to pause for a change of
tape and thereby performed it again, sped up, to
the satisfaction of the recording team.
Like Monk had done before his show,
Tolliver rehearsed his band to negotiate the
twists and turns of the swinging arrangements.
As a result, the group was intent, tight and spirited
in a refined jazz fluidity. Tenor saxophonist
Marcus Strickland was a revelation of grace and
beauty in his solo spotlights. Tolliver delivered
piercing, staccato, off-kilter notes on the sassy
“Friday The 13th” and Howard Johnson
exclaimed booming, joyful runs on baritone saxophone,
especially during the turning point of
the show, the tugging, pushing, sweeping launch
through “Little Rootie Tootie.”
Before that number, the show exhibited full-
22 DOWNBEAT June 2009