CHICK COREA – Trilogy 3 – Candid – Available media: CD 2xLP
This important work appears for the reborn Candid Records, the third episode of Trilogy, a succulent double LP that, like the previous ones of 2013 and 2018, is composed of recordings from concerts held by a simply stellar Corea trio, with Christian McBride on double bass and Brian Blade on drums.
The tour then suddenly stopped due to the global pandemic and ironic fate wanted it to never resume because the following year Chick left this vale of tears due to cancer, on the threshold of 80 years of age.
It is likely that these recordings, especially those from a Parisian concert in 2020, are therefore the last of a formation that has held in its hand for a certain period the sacred flame of the piano-jazz-trio exposed to the highest world levels, in some ways a proud counterpoint to the modus operandi of the contemporary Jarretti trio.
Ready, steady, go, and it is immediately pure Korean glory, with “Humpty Dumpty”, which refers straight to “The Mad Hatter”, a 1978 album inspired by Lewis Caroll’s Alice, a song proposed here in its pure form, the trio sets sail, a flow of unheard freshness comes out.
Hush, how much we miss Chick Corea… and what a balm this live work that relaunches his extraordinary clarity as a performer and his greatness as a composer, in this trio that is a legacy to be preserved and consumed with listening…
Sincere sigh and then we continue with the extended revisitation of “Windows”, another composition in ¾ of Corea from ’66 that has become a world standard, and after so much beauty it is the turn of the Monkian repertoire to be evoked and explored with authority and mastery, here is the angular magic of “Ask Me Now”, here is the oblique release of “Trinkle Tinkle” with the trio that plays with telepathic empathy on the razor of each solo.
It is like being in the garden of jazz wonders, the theme is enunciated by the leader with a series of exquisite solo refractions, before calling the other two titans to listen.
In Scarlatti’s lively “Sonata in D Minor” McBride’s bow is the protagonist, and the baroque-bop piece precedes a sumptuous and extended “Spanish Song”, while the finale is entrusted to the beloved Bud Powell with “Tempus Fugit”, a sort of kaleidoscope that makes the theater explode with ovations.
The liner notes, handwritten by Blade and McBride add emotions to those, already enormous, aroused by listening. The Third Trilogy cubed by the Trio, in short, closes a work that is in some ways epochal. Chick Corea Lives!
