Leaving aside the upcoming September bonus of the concert by Diana Krall, none other than Chick Corea with his stellar trio concluded Jazzfest this year. Together with Brian Blade and Eddie Gomez they brought this year’s event to a luxurious close.
When someone has this musical talent, as confirmed for example with twenty-two Grammy award, combined with the musical and life experience of a seventy-five-year-old person, you can virtually count on him giving a wonderful concert. And this was the case in Brno, with the professionality with which all the musicians performed being almost unbelievable.
The tuning of the instruments is normal at the start of a concert is a pretty standard item. However this time Chick Corea wanted right from the start to also tune up his audience, and completely without preparation he tried to get the listeners singing. With the motto ‘we will tune you as well’ it was as if he were testing the musical ear and musicality of everyone in the hall. And it was as if it was some kind of test from the results of which he then chose the repertoire for the concert. The audience reacted very timidly, but in the end the subdued choir in the Boby Centre began discreetly to sing and the concert could begin with the composition 500 Miles High.
There is probably no need to discuss the craftsmanship of the individual musicians, since all of the participants are considered masters of their art and also in Brno they left no-one with any doubt about their abilities. The space they gave each other and the way the band played together as a whole did not suggest in any way that there was a specific leader. From his role as official leader of the band Chick Corea only took on the extra role of communicating with the audience. After the initial performance of Alice in Wonderland and the new composition Spanish Song however even in this he for a moment handed over the baton to Eddie Gomez. After inviting those present to dance he took up the reins and with an emotive solo introduced the ballad But Beautiful. If anyone was able to find somewhere to dance in the Boby Centre, then after being emboldened by the ballad they could go straight to the tango that Corea wrote for his mother. Anna’s tango was the high point off the evening, coming after almost an hour. Gomez took things a bit further with a solo that the audience applauded. In the concluding piece, but not just there, it was Brian Blade who shone. His solo built the atmosphere even higher and gave the audience an irrefutable reason to give a standing ovation at the end. The audience applauded really enthusiastically and as a reward the musicians returned with Corea’s popular composition Spain. At the end of the piece there was once more a chance for the Brno audience to show their singing skills, and this time they were a bit braver, and once more with a standing ovation they called the musicians back. They gave their definitive farewell with the standard Blue Monk.
After the line-up The Vigil and the duo with Bobby McFerrin Corea brought to Brno an uncompromising classical trio. On the musical side the evening brought no particularly surprising moments, but watching masters of their art will never grow old. It is clear that no-one will complain if in two years’ time Chick Corea appears in Brno again in one of his other incarnations.
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