JAZZ REVIEW : Electrifying Turn From Corea’s Akoustic Band

Chick Corea, the chameleonic pianist whose ever-changing musical nature has less to do with his survival than it does with his desire for multiple expression, brought his Akoustic Band to a packed house at the Strand in Redondo Beach on Wednesday night for its Los Angeles-area debut.

“It’s a chance to get away from the electric stuff,” said a smiling Corea before the first of his two shows at the cavernous Redondo Beach club.

The group, which features bassist John Patitucci and drummer Dave Weckl, is actually the rhythm section of his five-man Elektric Band, first formed as a trio in 1985. Though the core personnel is the same, Corea’s fission of his fusion band rendered everything else remarkably different: From the missing rack of keyboards and banks of amplifiers, to a repertoire that included jazz standards (a couple of them barely recognizable, thank you) and a few of his own compositions from over the years.

The resulting efforts from a nine-tune opening set that lasted nearly two hours were nothing short of fantastic. While the Elektric Band draws much of its power from a wall socket, the Akoustic Band created powerful jolts of electricity from unencumbered talent.

Promising the enthusiastic SRO house “a few ditties,” the elfin Corea took his place at the acoustic piano and started things off with a blues piece. That the tune was John Coltrane’s “Bessie’s Blues,” didn’t much matter, as the pace was brighter than originally called for, the lines more jagged and the improvised melodies far removed from the composer’s.

Similarly removed from the composer’s content was Corea’s later rendition of “Green Dolphin Street.” Following on the heels of an impressionistic reading of Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady,” the mood of “Green Dolphin Street” was decidedly Duke-ish, the melody of the tune never played.

“I guess we never got around to playing the melody,” Corea said after the set. Adding that that approach was taken “definitely to create interest,” the pianist characterized as fun his making an initial “alteration, then altering the alteration before altering that alteration.”

Less altered, though equally rich with extemporaneous melodies, was the trio’s rendition of “How Deep Is the Ocean.” Beginning with Corea’s solo introduction, the tune developed by stages into a hard-driving swing vehicle powered by Weckl’s imaginative playing. A similar sense of drive, though considerably funked up during a piano-and-drums dialogue, was offered by the drummer in “Morning Sprite,” a Corea composition that recalled the spirit of Horace Silver.

Bassist Patitucci, after a decade of being touted as the second coming of Jimmy Blanton, has hit one of his many strides in this setting. A remarkable young player on every front, Patitucci showed himself an enthusiastic team player and a richly inventive soloist.

During a lengthy piece based on Corea’s “Three Quartets,” Patitucci overwhelmed with an extended solo, adding, at various points, a baroque quality, a Romantic theme, a modal contrast to Corea’s major-key melody, and a headstrong sense of seeing. Though his technique is virtuosic, his musicality is even more impressive; he exhausts the listener with his nonstop flow of ideas.

Though noncommittal about his future plans (the classical stuff is “on hold” for the time being; he’ll be reuniting with Herbie Hancock in Japan later this year), Corea can no doubt count on the Akoustic Band to develop a busy agenda in the coming years. On the list of his many accomplishments, this trio deserves a place at the very top.