Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 06/09/1998
Run Time: 65:23
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.
Corea's compositions are often fairly uneven -- the allegedly
Ellington-inspired convolutions of
"Molecules" especially try the patience -- yet everything here testifies to
Corea's still restless, creatively vigorous nature at age 56. For some unknown reason, the Japanese version of the disc is said to contain an extra track,
"Sifu," recorded in
Corea's home with just the piano trio.
~Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide