Chick Corea 25th Anniversary DVD News

[Bernie Connors]

Hey all,

Just some news from Chick's website on the Blue Note 25th Anniversary DVD's.

Here it is...

As part of a two week extravaganza celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the world famous Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, Chick reunited with two incredible bands in November of ‘06.

Week one featured the Elektric Band with Chick/keyboards (including Rhodes and Mini Moog), Dave Weckl/drums, Eric Marienthal/saxes, Frank Gambale/guitar and bass virtuoso Victor Wooten. The music nearly raised the roof off the venerable jazz club making it a very memorable week for this one-of-kind ensemble. The band played a great cross-section of material from the Elektric Band catalog. The band was in top form and with the addition of Victor Wooten on bass for this special engagement, the group was grooving and burning hard.

The second exciting week featured a group of musicians Chick dubbed "The Leprechaun Band." This group featured Chick on keyboards, the great Steve Gadd on drums, bass legend Anthony Jackson, the amazing Ravi Coltrane on saxes and the Elektric Band's Frank Gambale.

This exclusive reunion focused on Chick's music from the 70's; revisiting tunes from the classic albums The Leprechaun, The Mad Hatter, My Spanish Heart and Friends. This group was really special because it was the first time Chick, Steve Gadd and Anthony Jackson--all musicians who were on the original recordings--had ever played the music live together!

To take things over the top, Chick and band played Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy from the first electric Return To Forever album. There's a special significance to this in that Steve Gadd was actually the original drummer for the electric Return To Forever band (a little known bit of fusion-lore) before Lenny White joined the group.

The gigs were documented with a very innovative video shoot using 15 miniature High Definition cameras placed around the stage at different interesting vantage points. The end result will make you feel like you're actually on stage and in the band!

Additionally, there are plans to make a special "instructional video" version of this film, where the viewer would be able to focus on a particular player in viewing the DVD. If you wanted to watch only Victor Wooten (or whoever your choice was) for the whole performance, from two or three camera angles, the viewer would have that flexibility. You could switch between all of the players individually or watch the show with the "conventional" edit.

It takes a lot of work to edit that many cameras and mix the audio in 5.1 Surround Sound, so you won’t likely see the release of this DVD until fall or winter of 2007.

You're going to love both of these DVDs which will most likely be packaged as a reasonably priced double DVD.

Hopefully you're all as pumped about this as I am!

Post thoughts/comments...

-Bernie

[bassist15]

Im definetly pumped , I was way into "fusion" type music including Chick and RTF but never got an album. Lately in search of latin feel to music and Im tryin to get ahold of the 1st couple RTF albums and Stan GEtz's Captain marvel. the band with Coltrane , Jackson , Gadd , ect. sounds awesome.

[Peter Parker]

This is very exciting! Should be awesome.

[Nick Bassman]

Blimey is all that comes to mind

Good spot my friend.

Cheers

Nick

[Bernie Connors]

Thanks, guys!

I'm definitely pumped... It will be a wait but this DVD set will be a must have!

[Mike Flynn]

This will be amazing - I'll be happy to part with some serious cash for both DVDs - Gawd knows when they'll get released...

Keep your eyes peeled folks for any other news on this.

M

[WJGreer]

What, did Patitucci have a date that night?

[jerry]

Consider me pumped!

[watspan]

did these dvd's ever get released?

[Bernie Connors]

They haven't announced them yet. Hopefully soon!

[StanFan]

That sounds cool. It's a must for my collection.

[Larry99]

I went to one of the Leprechaun Band shows:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showth...97#post3540597

I was wondering when we'd see the dvd. ...and trust me it'll be unbelievable!

[KJung]

Originally Posted by Larry99

I went to one of the Leprechaun Band shows:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showth...97#post3540597

I was wondering when we'd see the dvd. ...and trust me it'll be unbelievable!

That must have been something to see. I still feel that 'Nite Sprite' is the ultimate expression of what is called 'fusion' music. IMO, the single greatest jazz/fusion cut ever, based on the writing, the chops and the entire performance.

[Larry99]

Originally Posted by KJung

I still feel that 'Nite Sprite' is the ultimate expression of what is called 'fusion' music. IMO, the single greatest jazz/fusion cut ever, based on the writing, the chops and the entire performance.

yes, I'm pretty sure they did indeed perform Nite Sprite! Is that the fast tempo tune where the whole ensemble trades solos, first in 8 bars, then 4, then 2, then 1 and they're all soloing wildly over each other at the end? ...been a while since I listend to the original recording of The Leprechaun but I remember that at the show. Man, it was somthing else.

[stevenclements]

DAMN - I want to see these! I 'just' saw Chick Corea with his "Freedom Band" play here in Edmonton and it was fantastic to watch...

http://www.dolphinstreet.com/blog/ch...eedom-band.php

"This is an all-acoustic quartet featuring past collaborators Eddie Gomez on bass and drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira with an old friend but new musical associate flautist Hubert Laws."

[Ray C Parrish]

I do not buy many DVD's these days with the "You Tube" culture we live in. But I'll have to buy these. We don't get many of these shows around here [southern arizona].

[KJung]

Originally Posted by Larry99

yes, I'm pretty sure they did indeed perform Nite Sprite! Is that the fast tempo tune where the whole ensemble trades solos, first in 8 bars, then 4, then 2, then 1 and they're all soloing wildly over each other at the end? ...been a while since I listend to the original recording of The Leprechaun but I remember that at the show. Man, it was somthing else.

Exactly! Gadd's playing on that is just simply amazing.

The CD has, in general, not aged very well, but that particular track is still a 'must listen' for anyone who digs that sort of 'classic' fusion... Gadd and Anthony and Chick... man... just something!

[T-MOST]

I can't wait until the RTF reunion this year. They should be on the east cost around August and NYC is a definate stop! Thats going to be absolutely insane!!!

[KJung]

Originally Posted by T-MOST

I can't wait until the RTF reunion this year. They should be on the east cost around August and NYC is a definate stop! Thats going to be absolutely insane!!!

I saw that band the first time around, when Romantic Warrior was released. It was very cool to be a player just kind of starting out at that time (mid 70's or so).

However, that would be the least interesting of Chick's bands to see as a reunion for me (well.. maybe the Electrik band would be even less interesting!). While Stanley's playing was just stunning to all of us back in the day, those fast pentatonic licks and fills sound pretty lame to me at this point. The music that band made was cutting edge at the time, but sounds very (painfully) dated to me at this point.

Just IMO there. That particular band, like the early Bill Conners stuff, the McLaughlin 'Birds of Fire' era music, Passport, Jean Luc Ponty, and even some of the Weather Report stuff, to me, is better left alone at this point. It was amazing, shocking, eye opening stuff in the 70's, but again, just seems to be more 'historically significant' than in any way relevant today.

Pure personal opinion there. Some of my best concert memories are seeing these bands in their prime. Just like Bruce Springsteen... if you saw him in 72 to75, seeing him now (at least with the E Street band reunion thing) would make you very, very sad, and feel very, very old

[AK Rev]

Nothing yet on this DVD? I didn't see any updates.