It’s amazing how much new information Chick Corea can give you in the span of half an hour. He does it in almost every interview, and he’s done it with me twice before. Our latest chat was different this time (read: Zoom), but in every other way it was the same as they ever are: warm, chock full of new developments and gateways to new music.
This time, Chick challenged me to listen to composers like Chopin, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk in new ways, but he also shed light on when his Akoustic Band—with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl—would be coming to Tampa Bay to rehearse a Béla Bartok concerto then possibly play a few shows.
He also opened up about his first in-person shows, happening in Clearwater this weekend, since coronavirus forced him, Christian McBride and Brian Blade to cut a European tour short. Read our full Q&A below.
Chick Corea: Solo piano
Fri.-Sat. Oct. 23-24, 8 p.m.
$160-$275 for tables of four.
Kate Tiedemann and Ellen Cotton Cabaret Theatre at Ruth Eckerd Hall
1111 McMullen Booth Rd., Clearwater.
rutheckerdhall.com
How are you doing today, Chick?
Not bad, not bad. And yourself?
Good. I'm glad to be talking to you. I haven't done a music preview interview during this entire pandemic. So this is like the first slice of normalcy for me as far as something I did before our paper laid off 67% of its staff. This is the first time I've done a music interview about a show since the pandemic started.
I'm excited because this is the first show I've done since we got booted out of Europe in mid-March.
Yeah, you guys were kind of on a roll there. I mean, obviously, you tour and that's what you do. And I've heard you in other interviews, you obviously want to be out on the road. And my understanding is you haven't done any of these cabaret shows yet though, right?
No, no, I haven't done any shows at all since mid-March. Bobby Rossi is an old friend because I played Ruth Eckerd and the Capitol Theater before; he told me about the cabaret theater, which I thought was a pretty cool idea—tables in the lobby.
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely something different. I guess it kind of goes back to those, uh, those Birdland days, you know, for you. I mean, you played lounges.
Yeah, well, the only thing that'll be missing from the Birdland days will be the smell of the dirty carpet. And the smell of the smell of beer kegs in the back.
Well, maybe they can work on that for you before you get to Ruth Eckerd, but my understanding is that it's a pretty nice setup.
Yeah, it's a nice setup, and it's gonna be fully sanitized, and nice and clean.
Yeah, I don't know what ticket sales are like—I'd obviously think they're all sold-out, but Kirby told me that you have this plan to pull somebody on stage and do a sketch of them. Which I don't know, if you've done them before, in your past shows, but you're pretty gregarious person, you have an easy way with people. Have you done this before? And if so, and even if you haven't, what kinds of things are you looking for, or seeing in these strangers that you pull on stage?
First of all, I've been playing this portrait game for years in my solo show.
OK.
It's a game that I used to play with my cousins when I was really small, like, six or seven years old. My father was one of 13 children; seven brothers and six sisters, so I have tons of uncles and aunts, and first cousins. So when we gathered at grandpa's place, there was a piano in the basement. We used to pound on the piano, making silly melodies of one another. As we spotted some of the uncles and aunts, we'd make fun melodies. I took that idea; you can make useful portraits of anything that you decide to. It's like painting really. I started doing it in my shows, because, I don't know, it included the audience. When I'm playing solo piano, it can get to be a pretty lonely thing with me all by myself up onstage. I like to make some personal contact. So I'm going to try it at Ruth Eckerd, with the audience's willingness, you know, I hope someone will be willing to come on up onstage—you don't have to sit right next to me. I'll have a look and say, "Hello," have a look at who it is and then improvise a melody that I think suits that person in that moment.
Yeah, that's pretty intimate. Now that you explain the way that came about, you know, hanging out with your cousins, it seems like more of a casual thing; you don't have to look deep into somebody's eyes and try to figure out their soul or anything. Do you ever think about any of these people after the show?
It's a pretty friendly contact, when I ask, when I explain the game to audiences, I tell them what I just told you, then I raise my hand and ask, "Would anyone like to come up and have their portrait painted?" I get the most amazing array of people, from little kids to older people; every kind of person you can think of might come up, so it's inclusive of the audience, and it's a kind of an adventure, too. Sometimes we stay in touch, they'll write to me after that, or they'll find my Facebook or email, and they'll thank me or whatever. It's very nice, I enjoy it.
This emotional back and forth between the audience and the performer is just part of life. It happens in other parts that aren't music, and it's hard to explain. You've been really good at tapping into the energy of a room; I suppose it's something that you can kind of know, but you can also kind of learn through the years of gigging. The sounds are going back and forth, and, and what's carrying the sounds, and the words and the intentions, the feeling—it's all there in the air.
You've been doing this virtual Chick Corea show, you did your first one ever with the paid admission. Naturally, fans around the world are tuned in. And then you did Facebook for like 30-35 days straight, interacting with fans, and that leads to the academy. We all know that there's nothing like the real thing, so I'm not asking you to take a crap on the virtual experience or anything, but what did you miss most in the online format?
When I got back in March, we were on a European tour—myself, Christian McBride and Brian Blade, our trio was touring, we were having a great time—then all of a sudden, this descended pretty quickly upon us. We were in Brussels. We were about to play in Brussels the day after the next, and all of a sudden, the Brussels concert was about to get canceled. So we saw all of the signs of this lockdown coming, and I said my tour manager, "Man, you better book a plane, get us back to back home." So we scurried out of Europe. And sure enough, the day that we left, the lockdown started; we just made it back into the U.S.
So when I got home, it was weird. I had never done this before, but my friend said, “You know, you could go on Facebook and just play and live.” I say, "You can go live on Facebook, really?" So I tried it. I went live, I put my iPhone, I went live and just said, "Hey, how you doing whoever's out there?" I started practicing for people. Then I walked behind the iPhone, to see if anyone tuned in, and it turns out, like, a tremendous amount of people from all over the world were tuning in, I thought, "Oh, my goodness, I never knew this existed." And people were very appreciative and asking questions, and I answered a few of them.
So I kept that going. They said how it was helping them, so I just kept going for 35 days. I really didn't think about live performance, because in a way, it was an experience all unto itself with me. With a live performance, I never see people giving me particular messages. On a Facebook page they say, "Oh, I saw you in. In Chicago, I saw you here play with the Elektric Band" and "What do you think about the Fender Rhodes? Are you using it anymore?" It was like a conversation that would go on, so it became a thing all unto itself. But like you said, it definitely does not replace being in front of a live audience at the moment making music.
I want to ask you about the classical album. In the past you and I have talked about your love for Scarlatti, and on this one, you're also hearing conversations between Jobim and Bill Evans. Chopin is there, Monk is there. Jobim played the piano really well and probably fit in with Chopin if you wanted him to. Of all these composers that you were channeling for this album, who was the loudest and who demanded the most attention in your head?
Oh, not any one, I would say, because in my mind, they're all part of a lineage of composers who made a choice of a way to live your life. All these guys—from Mozart through Chopin through Duke Ellington through Thelonious Monk to Bill Evans—they were all pianists who loved to compose music, and who also loved to put live groups together to play the music that they wrote. That's been the way I've kind of formulated my life. I'm basically a composer who plays the piano.
There are pianists who spend their life playing the piano. We're talking about Vladimir Horowitz and Evgeny Kissin and Yuja Wang and Lang Lang, you know—my life is different. I'm a composer and an improviser who uses the piano to get his ideas out. So that that lineage of composers is part of my growing up, it's part of my learning music, my cultural life. That's how I learned music, through Monk, Wyn[ton] Kelly and Herbie Hancock and Bill Evans and, and, you know, Bud Powell, Duke Ellington. Then going into the past, there's the beautiful legacy of the music that's left to us in written form by Mozart and Scarlatti, and Bach, and so forth. With those composers, you don't have to refer to someone's interpretation of them on a recording, I can go right to the written note, and go to the score and say, "Well, this is exactly what Mozart said, right here." Then I can take those notes and and give it my own spin.
Hey Chick, before I forget, I'm gonna take a couple of pictures, you're gonna hear the snap… let me get you big here, and then I'll take it. This is a once in a lifetime… it's crazy that I've talked to you as many times as I have, but I still don't know if we'll ever talk under these circumstances ever again. I was like, "I'm never gonna get to run a picture of Chick Corea with a doodle behind him." So I'm going to take a few pictures if you want to smile.
That's fine. Go ahead and shoot anytime.
Like you said, these types of interviews are strangely intimate in a way because you're kind of in the room with everyone.
Yeah, I think it's kind of cool, actually. When everything opens up, and the restrictions lift, and this period of humanity is passed, and we've survived, as we will, I think this technology that we're using now is going to be maintained and continue. It's really cool to be able to talk and see the person you're talking with and see the expression on the face and, and record the conversation.
Yeah, it's strange. Some of the venues are opening up here. They have limited capacity, but they're still streaming shows. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes along. I want to get back to your note about surviving, but I still want to ask you about some music here. You've been telling your friends about this virus, you say, "We've got to learn about it. Be smart about it. But you can't stop living life." So obviously, you're continuing to work in the face of COVID-19. Lately, it's you and Steve Swallow, you guys are hooking up doing some duets. I think Bela Fleck is back in your life, always has been, but you're writing new music, and then Hubert Laws is in the mix now, too.
Yeah, I've been doing some music with Hubert. I'm making an album long distance with—I don't know if some of the audience will remember the great Terry Gibbs, Terry Gibbs is a jazz vibraphonist who's now in his mid-90s, I played in Terry's band, he's one of the few who's older than me—his son Jerry Gibbs is a drummer, and he's doing an album for his father. I'm writing and doing some stuff for him.
I just finished a trombone concerto for Joe Alessi and the New York Philharmonic. I'm about to begin writing a percussion concerto for the Philadelphia Orchestra. These composing tasks are where my passion is.
And the Elektric Band—we're getting started again. I'm going to bring John Patitucci and Dave Weckl down around in the area, and hopefully do some gigs here in this area. We're also going to do a live concert to Budapest in December because I promised them a concerto that I wrote for them, but I never was never able to deliver it. So I've got all kinds of stuff going, meanwhile, keeping all of the sanitation rules in as best as possible.
I am going to ask you again about the commissions, and then you brought up Weckl and Patitucci, so I might bring them up again. I guess you're always working on something, but the circumstances are a little bit different. Is it especially challenging? Are your collaborators challenging you and vice versa as far as musical ideas and execution goes? How happy are you with the outcomes so far in the context of, you know, Hubert and Bela Fleck…
Well, all of these collaborations started out without a purpose other than to have a friendly contact and have some fun together, really. But then it turns out—because all of these guys are amazing artists and pros, and obviously have spent time in recording studios knowing how to record their instrument—the game has been, I'll lay down a piano track, send it to my friend, then he lays down his instrument on top of that and sends it back. It's virtually like being in a recording studio, in a way, and so the results can be pretty damn good if you have decent equipment, which all these guys have.
And you've long been sending charts back and forth electronically and stuff like that. That's nothing new to you.
Exactly, yeah. So recording with one another in that way, like, the Elektric Band now is making some videos. I wrote a new piece for the Elektric Band because we're touring a lot next year. I wrote a brand new piece, and we're gonna record the piece long distance, but everyone is going to video their performance, and we'll edit it together, like you see those videos being made. I'm gonna make a cool video of the Elektric Band.
I love how open you are with all of your projects and your plans. So many artists are so secretive, but I suppose you have so many. I always feel like I'm getting nuggets that you haven't said in other interviews before when when I talk to you. So I appreciate your candid nature.
I want to ask, while we're staying on these tours and stuff, I think something that gets lost when we talk about tours getting canceled is the effect that these lost dates have on the folks behind the scenes. You're the face of Chick Corea Inc., if we call it that, which I assume provides work for lots of folks when you're on the road. Has there been anxiety about having to cut back work for some of those people who might be able to bring money back to the families by being involved with your tours? What's that been like for you?
Without a doubt, without a doubt, and that's why, from my own personal team around home, I've been trying to do as much creative creativeness as we can to exchange with the world, so that we can keep going. One of the things I began doing was putting together Chick Corea Academy, which my team helps me put together. Bernie Kirsh is my audio engineer; our friendship goes back to 1975. I have Stephen Eckelberry on video; he's a wonderful movie maker and great with editing and video. So we have a team together that put together an academy with students all around the world. That was one way to keep everybody working. We have the students paying a subscription fee, so we're able to exchange with the world a bit.
And now now I'm beginning to use the studio to do more live shows, like the solo show that I did a couple of days ago. Then, as far as my musicians go, my musician friends, what I'm trying to do to keep our spirits up is just book as many gigs as I can next year, and put them on the calendar. I'm trying to get everybody to just put the future on the calendar. As a matter of fact, the name of the new Elektric Band release that we're making now is called, 'Future Is Now.' You know, don't don't think that this is going to last forever. It's a struggle for some who don't easily get work, but most of my guys and my friends are pretty productive on their own. They have all kinds of all kinds of projects going online.
This situation made me think about the way you talk about your dad, since your dad was such a hero for you and took you to all those gigs; he's on your wall of heroes at home, he's a huge reason you know the Great American Songbook. I guess I'm trying to wonder: How heavy were some of these real life things like, you know, applying for PPP, did it wear on you and all? Is it that kind of thing where you kind of wonder what would your dad do in this case? Because he was a bandleader, too.
Well, I'm not sure what my dad would do, he probably would've asked my mother what to do. And unfortunately, neither of them are around anymore, so I don't know, this is a pretty unusual situation. I mean, what I learned to do pretty much right away is, is learn about the virus—learn what, what it is, and learn the best ways to to keep it from spreading, and apply that to myself and spread the news around to my family. We keep all the protocols. I took my mask off for the interview [puts mask on]. There we go. Yeah, that's that. That's the way I've been looking for a while, you know.
OK. And just to ask about somebody who we see a lot. How's your sweet wife, Gayle [Moran], she's always with you. Is everything OK, with her? You guys navigating all of this?
Yeah, she's doing fine. We're making all kinds of plans to make more music together. We have a duet record that we've been planning for a while, I want to complete that at some point. It's a duet record; piano and voice, with me and Gayle playing all of these beautiful American Songbook love songs, which she does so well.
That's awesome. I always love seeing Gayle sing with you. And then speaking of the many Chick Corea projects that Chick Corea always is doing. I know you printed it in Europe, you sold it on a 2018 tour, but did we ever get that worldwide release of that set that you, Weckl and Patitucci did in St. Petersburg, when you did the two shows? You remember those?
That became part of, if not most of… the record is called 'The Acoustic Trio Live.' It's going for an official release, I think, I don't know, before Christmas or after Christmas—definitely. There's one very nice video that Steven Eckleberry made during the performance of "Humpty Dumpty," which we put out on social media that it came out real nice. When Dave and John come down to rehearse my new concerto for the trio, we're going to do more stuff and maybe, hopefully, in December, perform some more in the area—if any promoters are willing.
Oh, OK. Yeah. 'Anybody wanna do a Chick Corea show?' I don't think you'll have a problem with that—that's pretty awesome. And you might have hit on this earlier, and I know you mentioned the trombone concerto was done for the New York Philharmonic, but the Béla Bartok commission…
They're two separate two separate concertos. The trombone concerto was an invitation I got from the New York Philharmonic principal trombonist for I think, 35 years now, the great Joe Alessi. He invited me to write a trombone concerto for him and the orchestra. When I went and discovered his abilities on YouTube, I was blown away, and we became friends and talked about it. I've now completed that project and delivered it to Joe.
The problem is that the New York Philharmonic is not going to be operating next year. They're going to be renovating Geffen Hall. So the premiere of the trombone concerto is going to actually happen in San Paolo. Joe's going to take the concerto down there; I don't know if I can actually make it because I'll be on tour by then. But anyway, it'll come to New York, I think in 2022, with a big premiere in the brand new Geffen Hall.
Now the other one that you mentioned, the Bartok, is a concerto for trio that was commissioned by a Bartok society in Budapest. That's the piece I'm going to perform for Budapest online with Dave and John. That's finished. I already sent that one in. The score is done, but we haven't done the recording yet. It's a 45-minute piece of music, so it's not something to just kind of rip off, you know, we have to rehearse it a bit.
I know we're running short on time here, I want to ask you about this Cab Calloway gig at the showroom in Boston, at that Boston hotel. And there's a sidelight of that gig, which was getting a piano lesson every night from Herman Chittison.
Oh, where'd you find out about that?
I forgot who you were talking to about that. You were talking about some of your mentors, maybe, some of your greatest teachers. You talked about Mongo [Santamaria] and some people like that, but you talked about Herman, and I was wondering, have you ever been somebody else's Herman Chittison?
Ah, you know, you have to ask them.
OK, you won't say. You never had that you never pulled a young composer aside, and said, "Hey, you know, let's work on this for an hour or something."
No, you know, what, in truth, that relationship works the other way around. I don't choose them; they choose me. But I have a lot of young friends like that, who I'm in association with, and who I perform with. Through the years, I just consider them friends. The trick is, is they think they're learning from me, and actually, I'm, I'm looking at what these young guys are doing and copping all their licks.
Yeah? I think they know, but I think they're willing to give it up. You know, that's a trade off.
And you’re always really good at answering the harder questions for me. And I want to ask you because truth, trust, politeness, kindness—those are tenants for you. And I was wondering, that said, Where do you cast your vote from in an election? Do you vote from Florida? Have you already voted? And will you say who you voted for?
I reserve my right to remain silent.
OK, I had to ask. I read the quote about trust, politeness and kindness, and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. Let me ask," but I figured we'd get something like what you said, I won't press you on that one. And as we run out of time, we should check back in with what I feel has become a tradition for you and I. Your humor. We’ve heard you do Steve Gadd’s grasshopper in a bar and the one about the photographer going crazy trying to get closer to the horizon.
Oh god.
What do you have for us today, Chick?
I don't know if you can fire off a joke off the cuff here to close out. I think I probably blew my whole repertoire. The rest of them can't be repeated in public.
OK, so there are some Chick Corea dirty jokes out there.
Stephen Wright is a favorite of mine, so if you just look up Steven on YouTube, you'll get a ton of great material.
I always ask Chick to close our interview with a joke, and for some reason he didn't have one last week, but he brought up this Steve Gadd joke in an email shortly after we hung up. Story online Wed. and in print Thurs ahead of two solo shows @RuthEckerdHall pic.twitter.com/dTUy6o2atO
— Ray Roa (@rayroa) October 21, 2020
Is there anything you feel like we missed in this interview about these cabaret shows coming up here?
You know, just to sum up, I'm really looking forward to playing. It's gonna be two nights where the show starts at 8 p.m., after dinner. I think there's gonna be some food served. I haven't seen the way they fixed up the cabaret theatre, but Bobby Rossi said that they fixed it up very, very nicely. And I'm bringing in a special concert grand piano. My sound engineer, Bernie Kirsch, will be there to make it sound very nice. I'm looking forward to playing.
Congratulations. I'm glad you're getting back out in front of people, staying safe, being informed, informing people and, gosh, I mean I don't know when we'll talk again and what the circumstances might be, but I appreciate you making the time for us.
Anytime, man. Yeah, thanks. It's nice to see you and talk to you.
Great to see you. Bye Chick. Have a good night.
Later to you, bye bye.
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This article appears in Oct 22-29, 2020.