Chick Corea and Gary Burton – Jazz and Orchestra: Chick Corea (piano), Gary Burton (vibraphone), Sydney Symphony, Jonathan Stockhammer (conductor), Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, 10.05.2007 (TP)

 

Chick Corea and Gary Burton are touring the world to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of their first album as a duo, Crystal Silence.  The significance of this anniversary lies not in the commemoration of a landmark of the jazz discography, but rather in the fact that the creative symbiosis first caught on that disc continues to sparkle so many years later.

Although this concert was billed as “Jazz and Orchestra”, it was all jazz and no orchestra before interval.  Corea and Burton looked relaxed as they walked out onto the stage of the Opera House Concert Hall.  Corea shot a grin into the packed house and called out “Welcome to the Blue Note”.  He and Burton treated the audience to a classic set of jazz duos.  They opened with Steve Swallow’s Falling Grace, Corea coaxing a gorgeous resonance from his Steinway, lavishing the notes with plenty of pedal.  Burton soon joined him, and the magic of this duo was immediately evident.  It was like watching a telepathy master class, as each anticipated the other in a dancing dialogue.  Their ideas, so fresh and true to the moment, formed a golden mesh, with each knowing when to support the other and when to take the lead, passing focus seamlessly.  Corea's playing was amazing, alternately percussive and tender and exhibiting bright shades of colour in between.  It was such a pity that the acoustic of the Concert Hall proved so unsympathetic, dampening his tone in contrast to Burton's bright vibes, which were not so badly disadvantaged.  As a result, Burton tended to mesmerise the more, by virtue of the fact that he was more easily heard.  His touch was sensational.  It was percussive but tender, not so much balancing these qualities as combining them.

Native Sense was next, and was distinguished by a range of tone colours from both instruments and delicious contrast between the rapid shower of notes from the top of Burton’s range and the down town hustle of Corea’s piano.  Corea’s explorations of the higher registers of his keyboard achieved a lovely intimacy here, even in the enormous space of the Opera House Concert Hall.  The next item, dedicated to Bud Powell, was like fragmented 1940s jazz, Burton very much in the ascendant with a light upbeat swing, incredibly rapid runs and a perfect sense of pulse keeping it all together.  I was so taken up by his playing that I almost forgot about Chick at times, a testimony to Corea’s ability to see his comrade doing something amazing, and support him sympathetically and unselfishly.  But of course Burton passed the focus back, and Chick allowed us to wallow in the concert grand sonority of his keyboard.  This was affectionate, infectious stuff.  Allegria, a flamenco influenced number only recently written by Corea, began with both musicians beating out irregular dance rhythms on the body of the Steinway and blossomed into a whirl of Spanish speech rhythms and flecks of colour.  The set closed with a number that was not introduced from the stage and which I did not recognize.  I wish I did, because it was the highlight of the set, upbeat and bright to begin with, then brooding, dreamy and, ultimately, meltingly beautiful.

After interval, the Sydney Symphony joined the soloists on stage for an experiment in fusing jazz and classical styles around some of Corea’s most famous compositions.

Again, the acoustics were problematic.  Adding to the imbalances that detracted a little from the solo set pre-interval, there were also some microphone imbalances, which added a shrill edge to the strings and meant that sections of the orchestra overpowered each other and the soloists at times.

The ink on the orchestrations by British saxophonist, Tim Garland, was still wet when Corea and Burton arrived for their first rehearsals with the orchestra.  The playing of orchestra and soloists was fresh, but tinged with a feeling that these orchestral versions of old classics were still works in progress.  At their best, Garland’s orchestrations clothed the original music lightly in Spanish-tinged American neo-romanticism – something like Copland’s language spoken with de Falla’s accent - which teased the ear but did not obscure the soloists’ interplay.  Elsewhere it felt heavy handed.

I did not find the orchestrations entirely convincing in Love Castle, Duende or La Fiesta.  The performances, though, were generally very good.  Corea was deeply ruminative at the opening of Love Castle, and there was plenty of Spanish lick to the strings and brass.  Duende and La Fiesta were again Spanish in flavour, and there was some lovely solo violin playing from Dene Olding in the former piece, and Corea and Burton were in especially fine form in La Fiesta, Corea reaching into the piano to play pizzicato on the upper stings and strum the lower registers like an angry harp.

On the other hand, the orchestrations of Brasilia and Crystal Silence, the title track from the album that started it all, worked very well, with the orchestra making a real tonal and musical contribution to the dialogue, rather than simply interjecting between improvised passages.  Brasilia, which was originally written for Corea, Burton and string quartet, proved to be the piece most amenable to orchestration.  Much of the string writing was delicately textured and above and around it the two soloists created a wonderful narrative interplay with rhythms that imitated speech, coloured with energy and a lyrical bitter sweetness.  The final chord from the orchestra was like a sunset.

The strings created a ghostly atmosphere for Crystal Silence.  Principal cello Nathan Waks carved a deeply felt solo from his strings, but overall the orchestral touches were light, providing contrast and continuity without getting in the way of Corea and Burton’s magical interplay.  Corea coaxed Debussy-like sonorities from his keys and Burton’s voice leading in the maze of his vibraphone part was amazing.

Rapturous applause demanded encores and was rewarded.  The second was a reprise of the end of La Fiesta, but the first was something special.  Corea apologetically took up two of Burton’s sticks and played in duet with him on the vibraphone, the two of them mixing self-deprecating humour, camaraderie and incredible virtuosity into a single quality.  Ultimately it was this quality, writ large across the entire programme, that made this evening’s performances memorable and makes this duo so special.

 

Tim Perry