Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Chick Corea is set to issue the double album Plays (Concord Jazz) on Aug. 28.
(Photo: Toshi Sakurai/Chick Corea Prod.)Hearing Chick Corea in any setting, it’s apparent that his interests and influences range beyond the music that listeners most associate with the pianist. And for Plays, a double album due out Aug. 28 through Concord Jazz, Corea investigates the work of composers who have left an indelible mark on his life—and music across genres.
Offerings veer from the classical world to bossa nova and jazz, and include some of the pianist’s own original pieces. Below, Corea’s interpretation of the Jerome Kern standard “Yesterdays” premieres.
There’s a sober quality to the live take, but Corea still summons the ability to swing the melody, his left hand playfully searching out the rhythm.
“The thing that I do is similar to what [Thelonious] 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,” Corea said in a press release. “These were all pianists who were composers at heart.”
An unplanned analog to Plays are the streaming solo rehearsals Corea started during the pandemic, which have included material by some of the same composers he covers on the album. DB
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
