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"Jazz is probably the best music for worship, because it speaks to the existential situation of a human being." - Rev. John Garcia Gensel (Sheperd of the Night Flock).

Friday, 09 January 2009

Chick Corea and Gary Burton at the Music Hall for the Performing Arts in Detroit on April 6th

Written by Ronaldo Oregano

Wednesday, 28 March 2007

Chick Corea and Gary Burton

The Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts will host a concert featuring NEA Jazz Master and keyboard legend Chick Corea in a duo performance with the inovative vibraphonist Gary Burton on Friday, April 6, at 8 p.m. Chick Corea and Gary Burton's 1972 collaboration Crystal Silence has captured a place as one of that decade's seminal recordings--and it's still capturing listeners 35 years later. To celebrate the anniversary of their groundbreaking first duo album, these consummate musicians meet again for melodic and harmonic exploration that, like Crystal Silence, promises to be full of inventiveness, depth, and astounding spirit.

Vibraphonist and educator Gary Burton is known for developing the then-innovative technique of playing the instrument with four mallets, rather than the usual two. Winner of "Down Beat" magazine's "Jazzman of the Year" award, a member of the Percussion Hall of Fame, and Dean of Curriculum of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Burton is known worldwide as a musical innovator and master improviser. In a career that has spanned four decades, he's recorded with jazz legends like Stan Getz, George Shearing, and Quincy Jones, pop and rock stars like k. d. Lang and Eric Clapton, and lead the Burton Quartet.

Born in 1943 and raised in Indiana, Gary Burton taught himself to play the vibraphone and, at the age of 17, made his recording debut in Nashville, Tennessee, with guitarists Hank Garland and Chet Atkins. Two years later, Burton left his studies at Berklee College of Music to join George Shearing and subsequently Stan Getz, with whom he worked from 1964-1966.

As a member of Getz's quartet, Burton won Down Beat magazine's Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition award in 1965. By the time he left Getz to form his own quartet in 1967, Burton had also recorded three albums under his name for RCA. Borrowing rhythms and sonorities from rock music, while maintaining jazz's emphasis on improvisation and harmonic complexity, Burton's first quartet attracted large audiences from both sides of the jazz-rock spectrum. Down Beat magazine awarded him its Jazzman of the Year award in 1968. During his subsequent association with the label The Burton Quartet expanded to include the young Pat Metheny on guitar, and the band began to explore a repertoire of modern compositions. In the '70s, Burton also began to focus on more intimate contexts for his music. His 1971 album Alone at Last, a solo vibraphone concert recorded at the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival, was honored with a Grammy Award. Burton also turned to the rarely heard duo format, recording with bassist Steve Swallow, guitarist Ralph Towner, and most notably with pianist Chick Corea, thus cementing a long personal and professional relationship that has garnered an additional two Grammy Awards.

Also in the '70s, Burton began his career with Berklee College of Music in Boston. Burton began as a teacher of percussion and improvisation classes at Berklee in 1971. In 1985 he was named Dean of Curriculum. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate of music from the college, and in 1996, he was appointed Executive Vice President.

A groundbreaking artist both as a keyboardist (piano, electric piano, synthesizer) and as a composer-arranger, Chick Corea has moved fluidly among jazz, fusion, and classical music throughout a four-decade career, winning national and international honors including 12 Grammy awards. He ranks with Herbie Hancock (JM) and Keith Jarrett as one of the leading piano stylists to emerge after Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner (JM), and he has composed such notable jazz standards as "Spain," "La Fiesta," and "Windows."

Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1941, Corea began playing piano and drums at an early age and enjoyed a childhood home filled with the music of Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie (JM), and Lester Young, as well as Mozart and Beethoven. From 1962 to 1966 he gained experience playing with the bands of Mongo Santamaria and Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Herbie Mann, and Stan Getz. He made his recording debut as a leader with Tones For Joan's Bones (1966) and in 1968 recorded the classic trio album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes (JM). Following a short period with Sarah Vaughan (JM), Corea then joined Miles Davis's (JM) group, in which he gradually replaced Herbie Hancock. Davis persuaded Corea to play electric piano on the influential albums Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and Miles Davis at the Fillmore.

In 1971, Corea formed the ensemble Return to Forever with Stanley Clarke on bass, Flora Purim on vocals, her husband Airto Moreira on drums, and Joe Farrell on reeds. Within a year, the soft, samba-flavored group had become an innovative, high-energy electric fusion band, incorporating the firepower of drummer Lenny White and guitarist Al DiMeola. Spearheaded by Corea's distinctive style on Moog synthesizer, Return to Forever led the mid-1970s fusion movement with albums such as Where Have I Known You Before, Romantic Warrior, and the Grammy award-winning No Mystery. In 1985, Corea formed a new fusion group, The Elektric Band, and a few years later he formed The Akoustic Band. In 1992, he established his own record label, Stretch Records.

The Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts presents the Chick Corea and Gary Burton Duo on Friday, April 6, 2007. The concert begins at 8 p.m. The concert is part of the Detroit International Jazz Fest Series which also featured Oscar Castro-Neves, Dianne Reeves Trio and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Afro-Latin Orchestra with Ballet Hispanico.

Tickets for the shows are $28.50 - $62.00 and can be purchased online at www.ticketmaster.com, via phone at (248) 645-6666, or at the Music Hall Box Office. For more information or updates, go to www.musichall.org or call (313) 887-8501.

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