New Chick Corea disc?

[Chrome]

Anyone familiar with a new Chick Corea disc called "To the Stars"? He's seems to have picked an interesting venue at which to release it ...

Legendary Jazz Great Chick Corea and Rock Producer Eddie Kramer Host National Press Conferences at Atlanta's Dragon*Con this Labor Day Weekend

Friday September 3, 12:57 pm ET

ATLANTA, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Dragon*Con (www.dragoncon.org), America's largest annual science fiction and pop-culture event kicks off Labor Day Weekend with a press conference and Album Release Party of "To The Stars" for legendary jazz great Chick Corea, hosted by Kill Bill actor and fellow musician David Carradine, followed by a pre-release conference of the Norwegian rock foursome Hangface, hosted by veteran rock producer and engineer Eddie Kramer. The back-to-back programs begin 4:00 pm in the Woodruff Suite at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Downtown Atlanta.

***

The music of the Chick Corea album is a spellbinding and masterfully innovative tone poem inspired by one of the most powerful novels in the history of science fiction -- L. Ron Hubbard's "To the Stars." According to Corea, "I came across a part in the beginning that describes the Captain of the spaceship playing a hypnotic melody on the piano in a dive of a spaceport bar in what is called 'New Chicago' and I thought to myself, 'I hear that music.'" The album brought the Elektric Band back into the recording studio for the first time in a decade with Chick, on piano and synthesizers, reuniting with original band members; bassist John Patitucci, drummer Dave Weckl, guitarist Frank Gambale and saxophonist Eric Marienthal.

Twelve-time Grammy Award winning musician, Chick Corea and his world-famed Elektric Band will perform passages from their groundbreaking new album, "To the Stars," on Saturday, September 4, 2004 at 10:00 pm in the Centennial Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hotel at Dragon*Con. Corea will also participate in a live audio theatre performance of "To The Stars" on Sunday, September 5, 2004 at the Atlanta Civic Center, also featuring Carradine and fantasy Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The Elektric Band - a lapse in taste is now a relapse.

Gee, Chick Corea decided to write an album based on a science fiction book - what author? Bradbury? Asimov? Verne? Clarke? Heinlein?

Oh. Right.

Gotta give this a big miss.

Mike

[RonF]

  Michael Fitzgerald said:

The Elektric Band - a lapse in taste is now a relapse.

Gee, Chick Corea decided to write an album based on a science fiction book - what author? Bradbury? Asimov? Verne? Clarke? Heinlein?

Oh. Right.

Gotta give this a big miss.

Mike

Yep.

I've tried to listen.

Thumbdown.

[Alexander]

I got it, and I've gotta say that I like it. Yes, Chick is a flake and his devotion to L. Ron isn't one of his most attractive features, and yes, the disc features EXTREMELY cheesy "spacy" synths. However, that said...

If you dig fusion (and I do) and you dig the whole jazz-rock/prog rock thing (which I do, to a certain extent), this disc has a lot to recommend it. The compositions are very beautiful, and the playing is of the highest order, especially Patitucci's bass (he's another major flake, btw). I could have done with a LITTLE less whanging guitar, but on the whole this is a very tasteful album. Not NEARLY as bad as I had feared...

[Bright Moments]

i'm with alexander. if you like fusion (and who dosen't? ) i give this a

i know it's easy for you to pan this one mike, but you really should at least give it a listen first!!!

[Michael Fitzgerald]

But there's so much more out there that I'd rather listen to than anything involving Frank Gambale, Dave Weckl, or Eric Marienthal. I gave up on those guys almost immediately when they first did the Elektric Band - no redeeming qualities. Patitucci I will cut some slack. Corea is someone who I really like, a lot of the time. But sometimes I don't know *what* he is thinking.

If this new record approaches the glory that was the Elektric Band at its zenith - gotta give it a big miss. Because there was never any glory. Best stuff that group ever did was as a trio (prior to the first record) and even that wasn't as interesting as what Corea did with the same material elsewhere (for example, the Johannesburg sessions on Elektra/Musician with Steve Kujala, among others).

And I'm not opposed to fusion, just bad fusion.

Mike

[RDK]

  Michael Fitzgerald said:

But there's so much more out there that I'd rather listen to than anything involving Frank Gambale, Dave Weckl, or Eric Marienthal. I gave up on those guys almost immediately when they first did the Elektric Band - no redeeming qualities. Patitucci I will cut some slack. Corea is someone who I really like, a lot of the time. But sometimes I don't know *what* he is thinking.

If this new record approaches the glory that was the Elektric Band at its zenith - gotta give it a big miss. Because there was never any glory. Best stuff that group ever did was as a trio (prior to the first record) and even that wasn't as interesting as what Corea did with the same material elsewhere (for example, the Johannesburg sessions on Elektra/Musician with Steve Kujala, among others).

Couldn't agree more!

Lately, some of my favorite Corea recordings have been some boots of broadcasts he's done over the years. Tremendous stuff - much more interesting and appealing (to me at least) than some of his officially released albums.