Orvieto is a recent CD release from ECM of a concert recording of improvised performances by the pianists Chick Corea and Stefano Bollani almost exactly a year ago at Umbria Jazz Winter 2010 (in Orvieto). Corea and Bollani have been improvising together since they did a joint concert in Ravello in July of 2009, and it is clear from this recording that each has a keen ear for what the other is doing. What is more important, however, are the selections in which what emerges is a shared sense of playfulness. This is most evident when the point of departure is an original by one of the participants, “A Valsa Da Paula” in Bollani’s case and “Armando’s Rhumba” for Corea. In these dialogs it seems as if the “listener pianist” seeks out new twists that had not occurred to the “composer pianist;” and, for the listening audience, what emerges are moments of discovery that can elicit anything from a mild smile to an audible giggle.
Less satisfying are the two free improvisations, which appear to have introduced the two halves of the concert. These tend to grope about in search of a workable idiom and then, having established its workability, work it past the limits of patience. Free improvisation is no easy matter. It is invaluable as an exercise for performers; but it is often left better in the workshop until the performer(s) discover(s) certain structural qualities latent in the experimentation.
In working with tunes in which those qualities have already been fixed, Corea and Bollani seemed to work best with Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz.” This may have been because Waller provided more than ample opportunity for them to take liberties with both rhythmic and melodic structures, or it may just have been that there was an affinity between their sense of play today and Waller’s sense of the same in his day. More frustrating was the treatment of “Darn That Dream,” whose intervallic structure is all over the map and whose rhythms are far from predictable. This left one with the sense that the tune was struggling to get out of the highly imaginative web being woven by Corea and Bollani.
Taken as a whole, it is clear from the sounds of the applause that the audience was having fun at that gig, and much of that fun has translated nicely into the resulting recording.
Comments