Chick Corea And Origin Live At The Blue Note

Recording live at New York's Blue Note club, Chick Corea unveiled another new group, the challenging Origin acoustic sextet, on this CD, winnowing down some 12 sets into an hour-plus package. With Steve Davis (trombone) and Bob Sheppard and Steve Wilson (flutes and reeds) up front, Corea had a flexible horn choir to write for, and he uses mellow, urbane voicings that recall some of the Herbie Hancock Sextet's early work in the late '60s. The interplay that Avishai Cohen (bass), Adam Cruz (drums), and Corea have with the horns, though, is anything but mellow, and frequently they strike combative sparks against each other. Some of the selections, including "Double Image" (no relation to Joe Zawinul's electric jazz classic) and "Dreamless," have Latin-ish grooves – which are no strangers to Corea's Spanish heart – in spots.

One of Chick Corea's most ambitious projects was the recording of almost 60 hours of music with nine different groups over a three-week run at the Blue Note in December 2001; it must have been a challenge to choose the dozen performances for this two-CD set. The first disc begins with scat singer par excellence Bobby McFerrin joining the pianist to scat his way through three selections, including a stunning medley of an excerpt from Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" and Corea's "Spain." Bassist Miroslav Vitous and ageless drummer Roy Haynes provide the pulse to his extended work "Matrix." Corea's well-crafted tribute to Bud Powell, with Terence Blanchard and Joshua Redman in the front line, combines two of Powell's greatest works, "Glass Enclosure" and "Tempus Fugit." But Corea is at his most lyrical when old friend Gary Burton joins him to revisit the pianist's masterpiece, the shimmering "Crystal Silence."