Album Reviews

Chick Corea – Trilogy (Concord Jazz)

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91L5Rzf9-tL._SL1500_Like other young 60’s jazzers (Jarrett, Holland, Hancock, etc), Chick Corea has remained startlingly creative and active as he enters his seventies. Trilogy, a blisteringly live 3-CD set culled from a remarkable 2010 world tour, stands nobly alongside many a milestone in his expansive canon.

Viscerally and mischievously innovating with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade, Trilogy becomes a tidal tour-de-force. The trio lays back (“You’re My Everything”) and charges forth (“The Song Is You”, “Blue Monk”, “Fingerprints”). With flautist Jorge Pardo and guitarist Nino Josele, the quintet takes Corea’s singular composition “Spain” to dizzyingly dynamic and cinematic heights. A roiling read of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s “Op. 11, No. 9” sets us up for the reverberant, challenging, and previously unrecorded “Piano Sonata: Moon.” At just under a half hour, this composition incorporates all of Corea’s vast musical language, and his cohorts, zoned-in and empathic, weave their voices into a truly kaleidoscopic adventure.

If there is a peccadillo, it’s ending this percolating recording with a vocal performance of “Someday My Prince Will Come” with his wife, renowned vocalist Gayle Moran. Nothing wrong with a knock-out performance, it’s just that it brings such a triumph in on a very soft landing.

– Mike Jurkovic

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