ShW1
1976 was a great year for Chick Corea. Not only that he released with his band 'Return to Forever' the great 'Romantic Warrior', he still found time to write, arrange, perform and release the 'my Spanish Heart' album, which is one of his great creations ever.
This is a concept creation which expresses Spanish elements and flavours, as the name suggests. Some of the elements are flamenco, Spanish rhythms and scales, instruments and percussion sounds such as clapping that reminds of Castanaetas, so the Spanish feeling is all over. As for the heart, it presented strongly at the music, which is very moving. Indeed the Spanish roots are something in the faint of heart for Chick Corea.
The original format for this creation is the good old double LP, and like many progressive 2LP albums at that time, is done for 4 sides, that function as four parts of the creation. Each part, that takes one side, is different from each other by mood and style, while the whole 4 parts creating one unity.
In side I – there is line of short Spanish pieces. The main instruments here are Chick's piano, Stanley Clarke's acoustic bass, sometimes bowed, string quartet and clapping. In addition there are some trumpets touch at the opening track 'Love Castle', and the closing track 'Night Streets'.
Side II is the shortest of all, but full of content: Two pieces, one for piano and contrabass, ('The Hilltop'), and one for piano solo ('The Sky'). The atmosphere is etheric and floaty. It breaks wonderfully into the fusion piece 'Wind Danse', which evolves Steve Gadd on drums, Gayle Moran on vocals, and Chick's synth and moog. BTW please avoid purchasing a CD version from the 90's that drop the piano piece 'The Sky'. It just ruins the whole thing.
Side III opens with the 'hit' 'Armando's Rhumba' which is dedicate to Chick's father, and features Jean Luc Ponty on violin. On the cover Chick thanks Ponty for finding time to come to the studio and perform this piece. Yes I must admit it's really good that he did so.
The rest is something different though: An electronic suite called 'El Bozo', divided into 3 parts, featuring mainly Chick's synth and moog, in some beautiful sounds, some chirps, twits, glisses and whistles. Steve Gudd's drums are also in, with some rock\fusion roles, and percussive touch toward the end of this suite.
Side IV is dedicated to the closer suite, 'Spanish Fantasy' in 4 parts, a very moving piece which brings the 'Spanish heart' to its edge. A denser and richer orchestration, which contain prominent trumpets and strings. Great drumming and Spanish rhythms from Steve Gudd. All goes wonderfully up to the climatic end, and back to a quiet and solemn mood.
In addition to all the merits mentioned before, I'll mention also the reach instrumentation, the wide compositional techniques, from carefully written music to freely improvised music, which unified Corea's work at that time. A great Corea release from those years.