Chick Corea delivers to the faithful
Chick Corea Trio with Christian McBride and Brian Blade TD Ottawa Jazz Festival Confederation Park
At the very least, the thousands of people in Confederation Park Thursday night now get to say that they’ve performed with jazz piano great Chick Corea.
Of course, on the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival’s main stage, it was bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade providing all-star accompaniment for the 75-year-old legend. But before the trio launched into its first tune, Corea insisted on playing a duet of sorts with listeners in the park, exhorting them to sing back to him short phrases that he played at the keyboard.
“We want to tune you up!” Corea said.
It was a playful way to open up a show that only grew more playful, loose and energetic, as Corea, McBride and Blade — three world-class jazzmen — kicked the music into high gear and more or less kept it there for the next 90 minutes, improvising driving, elaborate fantasias song after song.
After the sing-along came an extended romp through Corea’s early 1970s song 500 Miles High, which the pianist first recorded when McBride and Blade were still toddlers.
Corea was all about dazzling, rippling melodic lines and incisive, perfectly placed chords. McBride and Blade provided driving, interactive accompaniment and each stepped out with a passionate solo when the musical baton was passed.
The musical intensity dipped just a bit with a rendition of the pretty waltz Alice In Wonderland. It was the closest thing to a ballad that the trio played all night.
After another rhapsodic Corea intro came a brisk, charged tear through Tempus Fugit. An aptly titled challenge thrown down decades ago by its composer, Corea’s bebopping hero Bud Powell, the piece was thoroughly explored and personalized by Corea, McBride and Blade — which is what world-class jazz players tend to do.
The whoops from the crowd after that tune’s exertions should give heart to fans of acoustic, swinging jazz, a brand of music that in recent years has been somewhat elbowed aside by non-jazz shows on too many jazz festival main stages, in Ottawa and elsewhere.
The appreciation for Corea’s unplugged music Thursday night was intense.
After the nod to Powell and bebop, Corea, not usually one to cover pop tunes, played the night’s tune from left field, a Latin-lilt version of Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise that gave McBride lots of room to stretch out during a bowed solo.
After a prolonged standing ovation, Corea, McBride and Blade returned to play perhaps his most-loved vintage song, Spain. The audience greeted its opening strains with whoops, and after a lush, romantic introduction, the trio made Corea’s swaying classic come alive again.
Rapt audience members cheered the song’s catchy refrain, and when the pianist, no doubt buoyed by their enthusiasm, prompted them to once again sing back his snippets of melody and later clap along, they were all in.