A Recorded Account of Corea as Solo Recitalist

Pianist Chick Corea (courtesy of Chart Room Media)

This past November this site provided an account of a solo recital presented by pianist Chick Corea as part of the Great Performers Series offered by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. As I observed after that performance, Corea is more than a jazz pianist; and he can bring imaginative interpretations to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as readily as he can to tunes by Thelonious Monk. Indeed, the title of last night’s program was From Mozart to Monk, which would have been the perfect description were it not for the fact that none of those Monk tunes ever appeared.

Those wishing to experience Corea’s solo approaches to compositions by both Mozart and Monk would do well to check out his latest recording, a two-CD album entitled simply Plays. Mozart is there at the very beginning of the first CD, and there are three Monk tunes at the end of that same CD. Other classical composers to be represented include Domenico Scarlatti, Frédéric Chopin, and Alexander Scriabin. Furthermore, both the Davies recital and the Plays album presented what might be called the musical version of “wine pairings.”

On both programs there is a smooth segue from the second movement of Mozart’s K. 332 piano sonata in F major into George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” On the other hand, on Plays Domenico Scarlatti’s K. 9 sonata in D minor is coupled with Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays,” while in Davies Scarlatti was paired with Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado.” On Plays “Desafinado” serves as a “response” to the “call” of Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debbie,” while in Davies the Evans tune followed the fourth (E minor) prelude from Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 11 collection of 24 covering all major and minor keys. The Scriabin prelude can also be found on Plays but as a “response” to the “call” of Chopin’s similar cycle of preludes, again selecting the fourth in E minor.

More interesting is that Plays documents two of the more adventurous aspects of Corea’s Davies appearance. The first of these involved improvisations that amounted to portraits. Two members of the audience (named “Carol” and “Adrian”) were invited to sit in a chair beside the piano while Corea improvised his impressions of the sitter. On Plays the sitters are, again, one woman and one man (Henrietta and Chris). Unfortunately, on the recording one cannot appreciate the extent to which Corea’s improvisations reflected specific visual sources of inspiration.

The second offering was even more adventurous. Corea asked for volunteers to improvise with him at the keyboard. In Davies he recruited one male and one female. On Plays both of the improvisers are male: Yaron Herman and Charles Heisser. I have to say that the first of these recorded improvisations was particularly impressive, leaving me with no idea of who was playing what; and I wonder whether the absence of visual impressions was an asset, rather than a liability. Finally, Plays concludes with eight of the short pieces that Corea collected in his Children’s Songs, which he also sampled at the end of his Davies recital.

Clearly, for my own listening Plays was an engaging revival of the many pleasant memories I took away from being in Corea’s audience, rather than on the receiving end of a recording. Nevertheless, there is so much imagination in his solo keyboard work, that listening to all of that inventiveness is just as satisfying as being in the pianist’s presence. This is the sort of music that offers new insights each time one returns to the album.