CHICK COREA & BÉLA FLECK – FINAL DUO PROJECT REMEMBRANCE OUT NOW
May 10, 2024
CHICK COREA & BÉLA FLECK
FINAL DUO PROJECT REMEMBRANCE OUT NOW
NEW ALBUM OF PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED COREA & FLECK COMPOSITIONS
LISTEN TO REMEMBRANCE
“I know it sounds unlikely. But it really happened.
Once upon a time, I played banjo in a duo with Chick Corea.”—Béla
VIDEO: Juno’s Piano Lesson with Chick Corea
When the 18-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist speaks of his years-long collaboration with the late pianist Chick Corea, he can sound like a bashful student musician, still obviously in awe of the jazz titan whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the ’70s. “I just feel so lucky to have played with him in such an intimate way, and to have gotten to know him so well,” Fleck says.
Their new and final duo album Remembrance is out now, and serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that Fleck and Corea first showcased at album length with 2007’s Latin Grammy-winning The Enchantment. It’s also a crucial addendum to Corea’s legacy, featuring three previously unreleased Corea compositions as well as five short free improvisations, or impromptus, that Fleck has infused with written music.
Remembrance is available here on LP, CD and all streaming platforms.
Recorded both live in concert, during the duo’s final tour dates in 2019, and via traded sound files, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Remembrance runs the stylistic gamut — from Corea’s additional unreleased tunes “Enut Nital” (or “Latin Tune”, spelled backwards), and his harmonic wonderland “Continuance,” an older work that resurfaced in the duo’s setlist, to new Fleck compositions, like the ebullient “Juno,” through clairvoyant interpretations of Thelonious Monk and Scarlatti, to challenging exercises, like Fleck’s “Small Potatoes,” that evoke Corea’s unsung work in the jazz avant-garde.
“The Otter Creek Incident,” the third single from the album, follows “Juno” and “Remembrance.” “Chick surprised me one day by sending ‘Enut Nital,’ Fleck remembers. “I played on it and sent it back and he responded, ‘Now it’s your turn! Write something and send it to me to play on, Fleck’. I thought hard about what to send him, and ended up attempting a blend of roots music and jazz harmony, but with a little of The Police thrown in. And he nailed it…”
“We pushed this duo to a new place before we ran out of time,” adds Fleck, who produced Remembrance. “We have here another cool look at Chick Corea, at the different ways that he can play that we wouldn’t have had. There’s a lot of great Chick Corea out there, and this is different.”
“With Béla, our duet has become so simpatico, and comfortable–comfortable spiritually.” Corea said in 2015. “And not meaning that we’re not adventuring musically, but I know that whatever we’re going to do is going to be musical.”
Corea’s death in 2021, of cancer at age 79, devastated the jazz community, who saw the pianist as a constant international presence, a vibrant musician who never ceased touring and recording. “It was a deep shock,” says Fleck, who also released an inspired live project with Corea, Two, in 2015. “It was one of the special relationships in my life. He was just so kind to me, and so helpful, and I learned so much from him.”
“He found the good in everything,” Fleck adds. “I’m just so glad to be a part of this — glad I could be with him, and glad there’s more to share.”
On May 4, Béla Fleck returned to Carnegie Hall for a triumphant, career-spanning night where he debuted his version “Rhapsody in Blue” in New York City with an orchestra and collaborated with Bruce Hornsby, Zakir Hussain, Anat Cohen and his Grammy-winning project, My Bluegrass Heart. He was a special guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Béla and the Late Show Band performed Fleck’s music alongside “Rhapsody,” and is on the cover of the April 2024 Downbeat.
Fleck will be touring throughout 2024 in a quartet with Zakir Hussain Edgar Meyer and Rakesh Chaurasia, a trio with Edmar Casteñada and Antonio Sanchez, as well as his duo with Abigail Washburn and with symphony orchestra. Full dates are below, with more on the way.
