The Future of Improvisation: Listening to Chick Corea

I wrote last month's article about the history of improvisation. This month's article seems to lead into the future. Last month I ran into Chick Corea, playing at a bookstore in Atlanta. There was a piano by the stairs and a microphone for him to talk. 12-time Grammy winner, Mr. Corea is one of the most well-known musicians in jazz. He began by saying that he was going to play a piece of music, which he forgot to bring, so he said he would just play something like it. The piece he played sounded like Arnold Schoenberg's op. 11, very contemporary, very abstract. To me, it was remarkable to see him improvise rather than play written music, as well as enjoyable to see the idea of music being one from classical to jazz, from written to improvised.

Before his second tune, Chick talked about American music being inspirational in his life. It is very interesting how his improvisation following this discussion was far from classical music, reborn as jazz. Many of us got into improvising from jazz, to be more precise- traditional American music.

In Chick's words:

"I thought maybe what I would do (I always think this up in a taxi before I get there), I thought it might be cool to really go back to when I was a teenager. And my father was a musician, and that's how I learned music, he introduced me to music, he was a very sweet man, he was a very good trumpet player. Get this picture, my dad when I was about 6 years old, and my dad with his musician friends come back to my apartment, our apartment, where we lived on the third floor above the bar, and they've got the phonograph on, they're playing 78 rpm vinyl, and they're playing stuff like Dizzy Gillespie's big band, Bud Powell, now there was a Billy Eckstein big band that Sarah Vaughan sang in. Eckstein discovered Sarah. So my dad and his crew are sitting around listening to this music, smoking cigarettes, like crying and I'm just into that music from the very beginning. So later on when my dad began to invite me to, you know, play dances with him, we played weddings and that sort of thing, there was a repertoire, which these guys played, which is standard music, American music. Lots of these tunes are still around with us, so I will play you one of these themes. I was just listening to it again this morning"

The connection to American standards is very unique in jazz as an art form. It is as much about learning them and the technology of improvising as it is about love. Standards are the source of inspiration for almost everyone in jazz to this day. And listening to old recordings is not only educational, but it gives us an idea of who we are.

Does that mean we have to play standards the same way they were played before? Improvisation is, by nature, an unpredictable beast. If you are improvising, you are saying what you feel at the moment. The tune is the starting point for our journeys, and we are transported to a new place every time. As Mr. Corea says, "I have a sort of theme in mind; I'll float to it."

When he asked me to sign my book for him, I found myself in real trouble. So I responded as usual; I played a song for Chick. At this point of my life, it is easier than coming up with something to write down. Just as it was easier for Mr. Corea to improvise something rather than play the tune exactly two hours earlier.

To put all this together, Chick is one of the greats of Jazz, and many of us would like to be like him. This is why I think writing about this occasion is important. His roots are our roots; he comes from American music, and for most of us it is also our musical home. Then we fly away to find new and unknown musical worlds. I always get excited to see musicians who are capable of having world wide view of music, music without stylistic, national and historic borders. Music is really one entity; we create it to express ourselves and to create something new and exciting.