# CD review: Chick Corea Band – Live In Tokyo 1980 – 2022: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/09/30/cd-review-chick-corea-band-live-in-tokyo-1980-2022-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2022-09-30T00:04:43+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The music of Chick Corea And + Sadao Watanabe is electric jazz with elements of
Latin American music and funk, not conceptual fusion.**

Bunny Brunel on lead bass guitar and Tom Brechtlein on drums were regulars at Corea
at the time, and the addition of legendary percussionist Don Alias? makes this performance
something special. Performed at Denen Coliseum, Tokyo, Japan, July 27, 1980.The 
recording was originally broadcast on NHK Radio.

The first time I saw Chick Corea in performance was in the late ’60s. As I remember,
he was called in as a substitute for pianist Hank Jones for a quartet concert in
Rochester, New York.  He was in heavy company: the band was led by trumpeter Thad
Jones and drummer Mel Lewis, and the group was rounded out by bassist Richard Davis.

Corea was only in his twenties at the time, and I had just barely heard of him, 
but I was impressed then with his technique, and especially with his command of 
block chords á la Red Garland. I also remember that his sound on the instrument 
was remarkable. I didn’t know at that time that he had been a student of Madame 
Margaret Chaloff, the Boston piano teacher who was a mentor to so many brilliant
musicians – including Dick Twardzik, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, George Shearing,
Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ken Werner, and Steve Kuhn – but I think Madame Chaloff’s influence
must have been one of the factors that gave him a leg up in the competitive world
of jazz in the ’60s.

(By the way, I wasn’t taking notes on concerts when I was in my teens. It is simply
that Corea was already such a distinctive player then that I could not fail to remember
him.)

More than fifty years have passed between that date and his residency at Scullers
last week. Corea’s odyssey has taken him through many musical ports of call – his
first sessions on LP as a leader in 1968 (_Tones for Joan’s Bones_, Vortex), his
experiments with free music and Anthony Braxton in the cooperative band Circle, 
a career-milestone stint with Miles Davis’s electric band, the Brazilian-flavored
Return to Forever group that got him his first big commercial success, his partnerships
with A-list players including Gary Burton, his own Elektrik Band, and the increasingly
frequent acoustic performances of recent years.

I love hearing him play the acoustic grand, and so I had to be there for two of 
his sets at Scullers. I’m pleased to report that his beautiful sound is undimmed
by time, and his sensitivity to nuance is intact. There were even some moments when
those Red Garland-style block chords made brief appearances. The repertoire was 
limited in the sets I heard, so I wish I could have heard a wider variety of tunes,
but I was delighted in his choice of virtuoso partners and even happier to hear 
from the door personnel that the house was full for almost every one of his ten 
sets, from Wednesday at 8 to Sunday at 9.

May Scullers take that success as an invitation to invite more of the world’s greatest
jazz players to give us residencies. We have too long been without the spiritual
nourishment that comes from being in the company of Greatness.

About that piano sound, and the guidance of Madame Chaloff: one of the most articulate
explanations of the Chaloff method and why it is especially useful to jazz pianists
comes from Steve Kuhn (I draw this quote from “Steve Kuhn – Back in Focus,” by Steven
A. Cerra, published on March 18, 2015): “You breathe as if you were playing a horn,
from the diaphragm. You think of your fingertips as a reed and the keys as a mouthpiece.
The sound comes out of you; it travels to the soundboard and out of the piano. It’s
a complete flow that should not be broken . . . the sound travels up through the
feet, the knees, the hips, the torso, through your shoulder and elbow, and out through
the fingertips.”

Another benefit of the Chaloff method is that it promotes equal strength in each
digit, so that all the player’s notes ring out cleanly and with even volume, even
in the fastest passages. On Friday night, I was seated close to the stage, almost
over Corea’s shoulder, and I could see how well he has absorbed that technique and
how effective it is in his hands.

During the course of the week, he chose tunes from nearly the entire range of his
career. In a pre-gig interview by Ed Symkus in the Globe, he indicated that the 
repertoire would include his own compositions, standards, and jazz classics. And
so it went at Scullers.

For me, the only real repertoire disappointment was his selection of “In a Sentimental
Mood” as representative of Duke Ellington’s contributions. It’s a great tune, I 
know, but there are so many less-well-known Ellington pieces that deserve more exposure–
I imagine hearing Corea play “Warm Valley,” or “There Shall be No Night,” or “The
Star-Crossed Lovers,” or “Isfahan.” Even “Mood Indigo” is becoming a neglected mastepiece
these days.

By contrast, the 10 p.m. show on Thursday offered a very welcome wrinkle that I’m
sorry I missed: Corea’s arrangement of a Domenico Scarlatti keyboard sonata that
segued into Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit.”  Leave it to pianist Donal Fox, who was
there, to witness a classical-jazz fusion in the spirit of his own work.

I also would have loved to hear one of Corea’s very early originals, like “Litha,”
written for his children Liana and Thad, or “Straight Up and Down,” a hard-blowing
tune, but perhaps they go too far back.  Fox reports that the trio revived a couple
of familiar Corea classics on Thursday, “Armando’s Rhumba” and “500 Miles High,”
which must have pleased the folks attending that show. On the other hand, he did
not just offer his hits. By now he must be tired of playing his best-known tune,“
Spain,” and so, in the sets I heard, he substituted a much more interesting composition
with a similar Iberian flavor, Paco de Lucia’s “Zyryab.”

The ghosts of Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans also loomed large. Fox noted that “
Monk’s Mood” and “Well You Needn’t” were part of Thursday’s late show, and I heard
two performances of Sammy Fain’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which was core material 
for Evans.

But the Evans influence wasn’t limited to that one tune. Evans’s trio, captured 
for all time in landmark 1961 live performances that included “Alice,” made all 
previous combinations of piano, bass, and drums sound old fashioned. His group, 
completed by bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, pioneered the conversational,
intuitive interplay that was adopted by nearly every piano trio that followed. It’s
still a vital tradition, typified by many recordings by Keith Jarrett and Brad Melhdau,
and now by Corea’s Vigilette Trio.

1. Nice Shot (Live) (12:26)
 2. Someday My Prince Will Come (Live) (11:53) 3. 500
Miles High (Live) (16:18) 4. Piano Solo (Live) (5:57)

**Chick Corea piano**
 **Bunny Brunel fretless bass** **Tom Brechtlein drums** **
Don Alias drums, percussia** **Sadao Watanabe saxophone**

![‎Live Under the Sky, 1980 (Live) by Chick Corea Band & Sado Watanabe on  Apple
Music](https://i0.wp.com/is2-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music112/v4/2a/4d/b7/2a4db7c1-
8ed8-4ee9-009b-93a0c8919578/R0001R00000137.jpg/1200x1200bf-60.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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