New York Times Review of Chick Corea in NYC.

[blake1]

A friend said there were nice things said about Vinnie in the NY Times so I registered online.


Enjoy [img]biggrin.gif[/img]


JAZZ FESTIVAL REVIEW | CHICK COREA

Chick Corea and Company, Lots of It, Play Up a Storm
By BEN RATLIFF

Chick Corea's performances transmit the best aspect of the musician's role in the world: he wants to play. He wants to play with people. Lots of people. As many as possible, and all kinds of music. He always seems comfortable onstage, as if he has just had a nap and a daily constitutional. Without becoming especially grandiose, he makes it clear that his function in society is to share his gift in the most unstinting way possible.
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He even believes in audience participation. Before a grand finale of his concert on Thursday at Avery Fisher Hall ? corralling members of three different groups to play his song "Spain" ? he engaged the crowd in singing the notes of a chord from the song.

But the mundane flip side to all this spiritual duende is an obsession with speed, technology and technique. And his audiences respond to it like crazy.

During his retrospective concert, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, the solos that drew the most applause were the note-iest, busiest ones.

The concert opened with Mr. Corea's duets with the vibraphonist Gary Burton, a drier but equally virtuosic player, whose control over four-mallet playing makes a rich bed of harmony. They've been playing together in duets since the early 70's, and have a clear, graceful communication. On "Love Castle," "Crystal Silence" and "Se?or Mouse," they joined suddenly on rapid written lines and then stretched apart into counterpoint and lead-with-accompaniment sections.

The Three Quartets band followed, reprising an influential album Mr. Corea made in 1981. The tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker and the bassist Eddie Gomez were original members of that crew; Vinnie Colaiuta rounded out the group instead of the original drummer, Steve Gadd. What an active band. What blinding flashes of moving parts. And though this band is a thing of the past, it has a basic lack of humility that doesn't seem so natural to jazz anymore.

Its performance on Thursday was remarkably fluid. The music flexed and breathed and roared, its written material incorporating elements of classical, bebop and jazz ballads. All band members, at one point or another, played improvisations asserting their independence. But it was Mr. Colaiuta, with all the quick filigree of his funk-jazz rhythms, who brought down the house.

After an intermission and the installation of a humming smoke machine at the rear of the stage, Mr. Corea's Elektric Band walked on. And here was jazz fusion, the real article. Now this was really a thing of the past ? but such a spectacle, such a fascinating entity to reinspect.

Mr. Corea's Elektric Bands existed from the mid-80's to early 90's, and recently he has been rounding up those musicians to perform again. The music is not exactly monolithic in its amped-up 16th notes; there are differences among players. The saxophonist Eric Marienthal injects a kind of soul, in longer, more expressive notes; Mr. Corea generally changes his rhythmic orientation every couple of bars. But the guitarist Frank Gambale, the bassist Michael Pope and the drummer Dave Weckl were like stylish nail guns.

That went especially for Mr. Gambale, who seems so born to his instrument that it's simply part of his armature. His solos each had the same quality: unbelievable speed and clarity, attained through his sweep-picking technique, in which a guitarist's picking hand scarcely seems to move. The band steamed through each tune, making an unbelievable clatter of notes, and when each tune ended it vanished quickly from the mind.

[royerin]

Thanks a lot for that Blake! [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]