Chick Corea & John McLaughlin - Five Peace Band Live
by Dan Upton
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Does Chick Corea really need any introduction? For that matter, does John McLaughlin? In certain circles, definitely not; but for the uninitiated, the two of them have been around in the jazz fusion scene since its inception and in fact both were influential in creating it. Take the two of them-- on piano and guitar, respectively--throw in Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Kenny Garrett on sax, and Christian McBride on bass, and you get the 2008 incarnation of the Five Peace Band. Oh, and on this CD, they also managed to get another jazz fusion piano legend, Herbie Hancock, on Miles Davis's "In a Silent Way."As an album full of fusion legends, it is perhaps not surprising that there's a lot to absorb here. Of the 8 tracks on the 2 CD set, only one clocks in under 10 minutes, and four of them surpass 20 minutes with "Hymn to Andromeda" nearing 30. The sad side effect of this is it takes a combination of focused listening and, maybe more to the point, many many listens to start to digest what's going on here. The first time through, I feel like I missed a lot of what was going on, and it's only after at least five or six plays through that I've really started to catch some of the things that are going on as the musicians take their turns soloing and playing off of each other. That said, even if you jump in and out, musically it's a fairly exhilarating ride. It was recorded live from a show in Europe and the production is phenomenal, making it sound a lot like a studio album with the exception of interjections of crowd applause. Fans of the musicians involved and who have time to invest in picking this apart should definitely check it out, but the more casual listener will probably feel overwhelmed and should look to some of the more structured (used lightly) studio work of related acts such as Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra.
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