One of the great early artistic successes of the ECM catalogue and a foundational text for contemporary solo jazz piano, Chick Corea’s ‘Piano Improvisations Vol 1’ (and come to that, Vol 2, which hasn’t been added to this Luminessence vinyl reissue) still sounds marvellously ahead of the game.

Recorded in 1971 at the Bendiksen Studio in Oslo, and produced by Manfred Eicher, It’s a miracle that it came into being at all, for at the time there was no commercial market for solo jazz piano, and little historical drive to try and create one. The slow-building success of Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert, released in 1975, would soon prove the exception to the solo rule.

But what remains inescapable is that at this precise time and on this specific session Chick Corea was absolutely inspired. Indeed, he plays like a man possessed, incarnating the very spirit of rhapsodic pianism. A torrent of ideas seems to propel those flying fingers onto the impressed keys of the studio’s Steinway in wave after wave of impassioned creativity. It still sounds shockingly new, this mixture of pure melodic lyricism with some daringly abstract doodling in a classically influenced, occasionally almost Viennese atonal mode, the whole thing tied together with Corea’s signature Latin trills, blues inflections and darting repetitions.

His conception of solo piano is orchestral in its scope, with dynamics of volume and intensity extended across the full length of the keyboard as if to cue in the different musical sections of an ensemble, with a daring use of space and silence when required. Stylistically, as with Keith Jarrett at around the same time, there’s a possible debt to Gary Burton’s vibraphone technique, the influence also evident in the airy, dancing, light as a feather feel that permeates the most characteristic of Corea’s compositions.

And the compositions are key, because there is a sharp divide between the song-forms of the superb opening numbers, which include variations on (or sketches for) some now classic Corea tunes such as the divine ‘Sometime ago’, and the suite of more abstract improvisations that forms the second part of the album.

This second part, a suite of eight “pictures” entitled ‘Where are You Now’, which takes up all of Side Two, can divide listeners, and on its original LP release it was customarily Side One that drew the heavy traffic. Compared to the light and joy connoted by the opening tunes, these often abstract-sounding squiggles can by contrast seem rather dry and academic. But then Corea plays his ace in the hole, a gorgeously melodic tune (Picture 4) that reaffirms his transcendent melodic gift. It really is the rabbit pulled out of the hat. A revealing retrospective statement by Corea, who died of cancer in 2021, and a sleeve essay by Neil Tesser that tries to locate the Piano Improvisations within a then contemporary context dominated by jazz-rock and fusion, completes the package.

The new remastering for the Luminessence reissue is a thing of beauty, bringing new clarity to engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug’s already pristine sound. Pair this with the superb debut Return to Forever album, and the duo with Gary Burton, ‘Crystal Silence’, both also for ECM, and you have Corea’s best of the best.

Release for Record Store Day 2025 on 18 April.

from https://ukjazznews.com