An Evening With Chick Corea & Herbie Hancock in Bloomington, MN

A year after the 1978
Chick Corea
/
Herbie Hancock
duo tour was documented on a two-LP
Columbia
album,
An Evening with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea
,
Corea
's label,
Polydor
, issued its own two-LP collection of extracts from the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Ann Arbor concerts. With both artists still selling lots of electric records then, it was feasible to do so -- and the two double sets served as massive ripostes to those who accused the two pianists of abandoning
jazz
per se in favor of filthy electronic lucre. Fortunately, there was enough worthwhile, often brilliant material on the tapes for both albums, with only one duplication of repertoire. The sole repeated item, the medley of
Hancock
's
"Maiden Voyage"
and
"La Fiesta,"
differs noticeably from the version on the
album. For one thing, it clocks in seven and a half minutes shorter at 27 and a half minutes. For another,
is developed more elaborately and
"La Fiesta"
incorporates more touches from the
avant-garde
and generates a little more heat. Indeed, the
album seems to have been programmed with more of a
classical
bent than its companion.
"Homecoming"
comes off like a big, progressive
20th century classical
composition, broken up in the center with humorous fury that is followed by a section for prepared piano a la
John Cage
.
"The Hook"
develops the prepared piano ideas even further, with plunkings and buzzing strings galore. And as if the point wasn't clear by now,
hammer out a pretty good rendition of the brittle ostinato movement from
Bartok
Mikrokosmos
, which doesn't sound at all out of place with the rest of the program. As on the
album, side three is a solo side, this time with
offering his lovely, Spanish-flavored
"Bouquet."
Overall, the
album is more stimulating than its
cousin. ~ Richard S. Ginell