If you’ve been privileged to see an acoustic piano concert by Chick Corea, you can’t help but be struck not only by his creative improvisations but his playfulness, rapport with the adoring audience, and sheer joy of playing his instrument. All those attributes are on display in this scintillating, breathtaking performance entitled simply Plays as Corea regales on solo piano across two discs and three LPs. Corea, although alone on the stage, came equipped with an extensive musical lineage, interpreting pieces by Domenico Scarlatti, Bill Evans, Frédéric Chopin, and Thelonious Monk, and illustrating the connections between artists, even when separated by centuries. Some of his influences are surprising and he combines those with his own interpretations, and jaw-dropping improvisations, some as musical portraits of volunteers from the audience and even better, duets with two of those volunteers. He stitches it all together with his informative banter, providing an intimacy that is often lacking from solo recordings.
Actually, the tone goes beyond intimate and is rather communal. That comes from Corea’s warm and witty dialogues with his audience, but also from the way he makes connections with the iconic composers whose work he celebrates. He also places these composers in conversation with one another, pairing favorite pieces in such a way that surprising commonalities are revealed that bridge styles, genres and eras from Mozart to the moment at hand. “I’m part of a lineage,” Corea explains. “The thing that I do is similar to what Monk did, to what Bill Evans and Duke Ellington did, and moving back into another era of music, what Bach and Mozart and Beethoven did. These were all pianists who were composers at heart, who gathered their own musicians together to play. I feel so proud to be a part of that tradition.”
Corea represents a wide swath of composers. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Domenico Scarlatti, Alexander Scriabin and Frédéric Chopin alone represent 300 years of musical history. His formative jazz influences include Bill Evans and, of course, Thelonious Monk, with the bossa nova beauty of Antônio Carlos Jobim adding the always-important Latin tinges that have long defined Corea’s music. The Great American Songbook offers the Gershwins and Jerome Kern, while Stevie Wonder appears to hint at a more modern pop sensibility.
As familiar as many of these compositions are – Corea includes well-traveled classics from “Desafinado” to “Yesterdays” to “Trinkle Tinkle” and “Pastime Paradise” – but there is magic in his unexpected pairings. Subtle nuances emerge when a Mozart sonata is set alongside a Gershwin standard, or Bill Evans’ wistful “Waltz for Debby” meets a timeless Jobim melody. One last composer who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as these giants is Chick Corea himself. He reprises his piece “The Yellow Nimbus,” in tribute to his close friend and collaborator, the late flamenco guitar virtuoso Paco de Lucía; the two originally recorded the tune as a duet on Corea’s 1982 album Touchstone. This piece, for this writer is the album highlight. It will take your breath away.
Other clear highlights are the “Portraits” and “Duet” sections on Disc 2. On a pair of “Portraits,” Corea spontaneously paints tone poems of a pair of audience volunteers, painting refined, spontaneous visages of the lovely, elegant “Henrietta” and the sly, robust “Chris.” The exercise has its origins in a childhood game played by the pianist and his cousins at family gatherings (his father was one of 13 children) on a sturdy, well-worn upright piano. During those times, it was an interesting kind of cutting session to see who could deliver the more mocking combination of melodies. Here, it is more straight-forward, serious, and beautifully rendered. As good as those are though, he ratchets it up even more with the audience duets. Corea never knows who might turn up when he asks for volunteers to join him on the bench – he’s had mystified four-year-olds and competent middle-aged amateurs. The two duets on here though include a pair of ringers: the conservatory-trained French classical pianist Charles Heisser, and the French-Israeli jazz pianist Yaron Herman, who has released albums on Blue Note and Decca Records. When they were chosen for these brief duets, however, both were simply audience members. “I didn’t know they were pros,” Corea laughs. “But it’s always a lot of fun when I invite pianists to come up on stage to improvise with me.” Now we know why those duets sounded so professional.
The set closes with eight selections from Corea’s book of “Children’s Songs” Corea first recorded the full 20-piece collection for ECM in 1984. These miniatures were written in the spirit of freedom and creativity inherent in the imagination of a young child – another way by which the sense of “play” enriches Corea’s music. “Children are free-spirited and joyful,” the composer says. “They’re still finding out about life, so they’re wide open and very communicative with their surroundings and other people. I tried to capture that sensation with the Children’s Songs.” Having met Chick personally, he himself emanates a youthful joy at age 78. It’s quite remarkable and it almost inexplicably enables him to make even the most serious music accessible. He strives to make a living room kind of environment at his shows and does so with enthusiastic audiences in concert halls across Europe and the U.S., who become integral collaborators in these spirited renditions. So, the title “Plays” has a double meaning hinting at the jovial, playful mood of the recordings. Corea says, “The piano was a toy to me until I found out that it could be a tool for me to improvise, write and create things,” he says. “But it’s still a toy. Trios were my first love, so when I play solo piano I like to get out on stage and have some fun.”
Rather surprisingly given this writer’s preference for band material, through the many fusion, trio, and combo albums Corea has delivered in his storied career, this Corea project sits at the very top – it’s a totally riveting, magical combination of music, vivacious mood, and unpredictability.
