TIME WARP

One of the grand aspects about pianist-composer Chick Corea is that he's constantly seeking new musical adventures. During the summer of 1995 alone, he played a repertoire of the great pop and jazz standards in solo piano concerts in Europe, performed the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor with orchestras in San Francisco and Japan. He also worked in quintet, duo and other settings and performed his own piano concertos in Italy and Sicily.

Corea enjoys similar boundary-jumping leaps as a recording artist. After a stunning album with his Elektric Band II in 1993, Paint The World, and the subsequent solo piano volume, Expressions, Corea has decided to once again explore the quartet format with Time Warp. This new album on Stretch, the pianist's first quartet album in over a decade, showcases the foursome of Bob Berg (tenor and soprano saxes), John Patitucci (bass) and Gary Novak (drums).

Time Warp grew out of a time-tested pattern for Corea: find some musicians with whom he has substantial empathy, form a unit, tour, build on that empathy, then take the band into the studio and document it. The current quartet first played together in the fall of 1992, performing in France, England and Italy. "We were playing mostly standards and some tunes from Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane," says Corea. "Then as we became comfortable with each other as players, I began to write a suite which came out as Time Warp."

The 11-part work is the musical depiction of a fantasy short story written by Corea. "I do well as a composer when I'm working off some kind of program material where I can paint a portrait or tell a story and move musical scenes around," he says. Time Warp is based "on the wild idea that you can find other 'places, universes,' not by traveling through distance from one point to another, but by moving time one way or another...maybe a couple of seconds, or a minute...then you'd find yourself in another place...Consequently, 'time warp.' The story is about a guy named Danny who finds himself in a time warp and the stuff that happens to him."

The suite offers a wealth of musical moods. The propulsive title tune leads to the smooth-flowing yet intense "The Wish," where both Corea and Berg play with muscle and melody, driven soundly by Patitucci and Novak. After Berg's cadenza - "You don't hear those too often today," says Chick - comes the driving "Terrain," and the edgy "Arndok's Grave" and the highly lyrical "Discovery." The suite concludes with the expansive, teeming with energy "New Life" and modern chamber-like quality of "One World Over," which is played without solos. The album was recorded in March in Corea's Madhatter Studios in Los Angeles and the session was a highpoint for the group. "The new music brought the band together and punctuated its personality."

Obviously, Corea relishes keeping company with his cohorts. In fact, one of the main reasons he formed the quartet was to play with Berg. "We jammed together for the first time in New York in the early 70's, around that time I was playing with Miles (Davis)," Corea says. "Then it wasn't until the mid-80's that I bumped into him in Europe and he sat in with the Akoustic Band. It worked so well that I thought it would be fun to expand the trio into a quartet. That makes my role as a pianist different in a way that I liked. There's less emphasis on piano solos and I got a chance to do my arranger-composing-accompanying thing at the piano, which I like very much to do. Bob has a unique and energetic way of playing. He's a modern melodist and his melodies are carved and honed so they make a great foil for me to create accompaniments on the piano. I also got him interested in playing the soprano sax. He plays sweetly on soprano. He hasn't done it that much and I had to push him a little, but I like the way it sounded. The higher pitch of the soprano works for a lot of the music that I write."

Novak, who was a member of the Elektric Band II, became the Akoustic Band's drummer when original trapsman Dave Weckl left to form his own band. "Gary, who is the son of Chicago-based jazz pianist Larry Novak, learned bebop at home," Chick says. "Gary can do anything. He can play really strong and bombastically. He has a good feel for the Latin-based rhythms, and he can also play lightly and swing hard as well as play the drums in a free-form way, which on Time Warp is sometimes necessary."

Patitucci is a long-term Corea collaborator, having been the original bassist when Chick started the Elektric Band in 1985, as well as providing the bass lines in the Akoustic Band, which debuted in 1989. "John and I have sort of become rhythm section brothers," says Chick. "Our playing now is kind of second nature. John is so melodically inventive, so rhythmically there all the time. He seems to intuitively know how to fill out the bass parts in the music that I write."

The quartet plans a few U.S. dates this fall - including club calls at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood and the Blue Note in New York. Another short tour is planned for early 1996 in Europe, but after that, Corea's not sure. "I'm letting the life of the group dictate itself. It's up to the desires of the four guys. At the end of the last tour, everyone wanted to do more, so now we have planned a couple more tours."

For over 30 years, Chick Corea has been an engaging, inspiring presence in the world of jazz and improvised music. Born in 1941 in Chelsea, MA, Armando Anthony Corea grew up the son of a trumpeter who took him to dance jobs as a child. Piano studies for this youngster, who became known as "Chick", ensued at age four and throughout his childhood exposed him both to the classical greats - Mozart, Beethoven et al. - and the jazz giants - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the prime influence Bud Powell. His first important engagements were with Mongo Santamaria and Willie Bobo, sparking a thirst for Latin music that has since been evident in his work. While performing with trumpeter Blue Mitchell from 1964-66, Corea made his initial recording, Tones for Joan's Bones, on Vortex. In 1968, he joined Miles Davis, playing electric and acoustic piano on the classic Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. Then came Circle, an avant garde quartet with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Aitschul. And, in 1971 Corea launched Return To Forever, the jazz-fusion band that remained his focus for four years. This group, which started as a dinstinctive contemporary band mixing Jazz with Brazilian influences, featured singer Flora Purim, drummer-percussionist Airto, saxophonist-flutist Joe Farrell and bassist Stanley Clarke. With time, it evolved into perhaps the best known quartet, with guitarist Al DiMeola, Clarke and drummer Lenny White, an ensemble which recorded the Grammy-winning No Mystery and the acclaimed Romantic Warrior. In 1985, Chick re-entered the plugged in arena with his Elektric Band and began his association with GRP that has produced over a dozen albums. The release of his debut Akoustic Band album on GRP in 1989 landed Corea his 8th Grammy. The artist and his longtime manager Ron Moss fulfilled a longtime dream when they founded Stretch Records, a subsidiary of GRP, in 1992. The label has recorded the likes of Berg, bassists Patitucci and Eddie Gomez and blues-guitarist Robben Ford while also reissuing Chick classics like Live In Montreux with Joe Henderson.

Who knows where Corea will turn up next. "My interests change and vary as the years go along, with different emphases all the time." Now, we have the very exciting and invigorating Time Warp, which should keep fans of the artist, and of jazz in general, happy for a good while.