Return to Forever: Chick Corea's Reunion Tour
Smurf
The impetuous Return to Forever reunion, "the jazz tour of the
summer," comes to the Mann, along with reflections on fusion's
excellence and excess.
Return to Forever, the jazz-fusion group founded in the early 1970s by
master pianist Chick Corea, is in the midst of a reunion tour that few
thought would ever happen.
Hard-core fusion fans will be pinching themselves when Corea,
guitarist Al Di Meola, bassist Stanley Clarke, and drummer Lenny White
take the stage at the Mann Center on Tuesday, on what DownBeat
magazine calls "the jazz tour of the summer."
How will the band's hypercomplex works and flights of daredevil
virtuosity sound after such a long absence?
Reports from the road are encouraging. But beyond just giving a stiff
dose of nostalgia, the Return to Forever (RTF) reunion tells us much
about the legacy of fusion and the evolution of jazz aesthetics in a
new century.
Clarke, born and raised in Philadelphia, has compared RTF's rebirth to
the reunion of the Eagles. But more pertinent examples come to mind:
This month, prog-rock warhorses Jethro Tull (Friday, the Mann) and
King Crimson (Aug. 11 and 12, Keswick Theatre) will also play Philly,
greeting audiences that no doubt overlap with RTF's.
To fusion's detractors, groups like these invented a kind of '70s
pretension and bombast that should remain extinct. Granted, RTF's
rococo excesses and mystical-futurist presentation - even the band's
name reflects Corea's decades-long immersion in Scientology - can seem
dated and hard to swallow.
But to write them off is to miss flashes of inspired, individual
artistry that have in fact aged quite well.
"Return to Forever" is the title of a 12-minute piece on Corea's 1972
album of the same name. Featuring Corea with Clarke, saxophonist-
flutist Joe Farrell, drummer-percussionist Airto Moreira, and vocalist
Flora Purim, this lineup became the first edition of RTF, which also
released Light as a Feather in 1973.
The group had a strong Brazilian influence. Purim's tender singing, in
accented English, recalled Astrud Gilberto on Stan Getz's bossa nova
outings of the previous decade. It was no accident that Corea and
Clarke spent time in Getz's band, recording several of Corea's RTF-
associated tunes on the tenor master's 1972 album Captain Marvel.
But with the appearance of Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors on
Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, RTF took a more epic-sounding, rock-
oriented turn. Soon Di Meola replaced Connors, and the classic RTF
quartet brought forth No Mystery, Where Have I Known You Before, and
Romantic Warrior - selections from which are likely to send the Mann
Center crowd into hysterics.
Return to Forever went through one last incarnation and released two
nonessential albums, Musicmagic and Live, before disbanding in 1977.
But it was the classic, now-reunited RTF quartet - along with John
McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter's
Weather Report, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and Tony Williams'
Lifetime - that came to define the fusion era. Every one of these
bandleaders was a former Miles Davis sideman. All had participated, to
varying extents, in the trumpeter's invention of a new kind of
ensemble funk.
Rhodes electric piano, distorted guitar, and flamboyant clothing were
the order of the day. Stanley Clarke and Weather Report's Jaco
Pastorius introduced entirely new, highly virtuosic approaches to
electric bass playing.
Some heard a vital, forward-thinking language. Others heard an
appalling sellout, the betrayal of jazz tradition. Peter Watrous, the
former New York Times critic, took the latter view in a 1995 piece
trashing Wayne Shorter's album High Life and assailing what he called
"the Miles Davis curse."
Describing fusion as "a mule idiom, a bastardization of jazz and pop,"
Watrous slipped in an incisive point: that this music, in part, was a
means for jazzers to reconnect with black listeners at a time of
changing tastes and widespread social unrest.
The result, Watrous argued, was "shockingly ephemeral." Yet Return to
Forever is back (playing, ironically, to heavily white audiences).
Boxed-set reissues of Davis' electric music are flooding the market.
Recent books on the period include Paul Tingen's Miles Beyond and
Philip Freeman's Running the Voodoo Down. (And Concord has just
released The Anthology, a two-disc RTF retrospective.)
On countless new jazz recordings, even in primarily acoustic
environments, it is common to hear Rhodes and other keyboards, rock-
inflected guitars, irregular time signatures, and other fusion
hallmarks. For many of today's young jazz players, whether or not they
consider themselves fusion artists, these inheritances are a given.
Beatmakers and DJs who swoon to old Moog synthesizers and involved
'70s funk grooves feel the same way.
To some, fusion will always be a synonym for adulteration, and it's
fair to say that the light R&B now known as "smooth jazz" is part of
the fusion legacy as well. But arguably, so are the genre-defying
works of guitarists Vernon Reid and Marc Ribot. "I think a particular
music can be part of more than one history," Ribot says in the
biographical film Marc Ribot: The Lost String.
Indeed, hybridization is now the norm across genres. Jazz is being
bred with hip-hop and breakbeats, Balkan and Carnatic music (a style
of Indian classical), indie rock, you name it. In most cases it is
creative growth, not commercial calculation, driving this process.
By the early 1980s, Corea, Clarke and White were playing pure acoustic
jazz with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and tenor great Joe Henderson in a
band called Griffith Park. They never burned that bridge. (Hubbard and
Henderson were fusion dabblers themselves.)
The classic RTF lineup regathered for a brief tour in 1983, then
fizzled for good. Clarke, White and Di Meola have pursued varied solo
careers, but none come close to matching Corea's, with 45 Grammy
nominations and 14 wins. It was Corea's guest appearance on Di Meola's
2006 effort, Consequence of Chaos, that led to plans for a reunion.
(Clarke will return to the area on Aug. 19, when he performs in the
bass supergroup S.M.V. at the Keswick Theatre, with Marcus Miller, and
Victor Wooten of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, who are opening the
RTF show.)
Much like Herbie Hancock, Corea has alternated freely between acoustic
and electric formats for decades. His RTF recordings stand up as some
of the most visceral, harmonically rich, sonically inventive work of
his career. There is talk, but only talk, of keeping the band
together.
All of RTF's members wrote music for the group, and not every bit of
it is stellar. But if they break into the sultry, operatic funk of
White's "Sorceress," or the fierce keyboard/bass dialogues of Clarke's
"Vulcan Worlds," or the oddly explosive rhythms of Corea's "Medieval
Overture," this writer might join the throng and get a little
hysterical, too.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/20080803_Forever_is_here.html