JAZZ REVIEW : Relaxed Corea Makes Stage Feel Intimate

Chick Corea came on stage Sunday afternoon, looked around at the flat, multi-planed walls of Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Fine Arts Complex, frowned and said, “Hmmm. How am I going to make this sound like my living room?”

And with that brief comment, the veteran pianist set the tone for a solo recital that he clearly intended to have the quality of a relaxed gathering of friends. Dressed in casual pants and sweat shirt, pausing before every number to discuss the music, moving chairs, microphones and music stands to accommodate his need for easy communication, Corea asked for, and got, a warm reception from an enthusiastic audience liberally sprinkled with Cal State students.

Corea appeared far less pressured than he did in a recent booking with his quartet at Catalina Bar & Grill. With only his piano to provide a musical center, and with a lucid image of the musical picture he was attempting to sketch, he was relaxed, playful and completely in charge of the program.

The first segment was devoted to a rare tour through a collection of standards--not usually prime items for Corea, although his 1994 solo album, “Expressions,” included nearly a dozen familiar tunes.

Corea’s approach to pieces such as “It Could Happen to You,” “This Nearly Was Mine” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” was very much his own. Corea worked primarily with texture, rhythm and harmony. Melodic phrasing, when it emerged, was used as ornamentation and filler for the compositionally structured readings that are at the heart of his style.

A couple of Bud Powell-associated tunes followed--a small taste from an upcoming album--along with a Thelonious Monk medley. Corea cruised through the music with free-floating rhythmic drive. But he needs to do a little more woodshedding on Powell’s “Tempus Fugit” before he commits it to permanent memory.

The program’s second half started with brief solo piano works by Bartok and Scriabin. Corea was then joined by a group of string players to perform a Mozart piano trio, a rhapsodic Corea piano/string quartet arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s “ ‘Round Midnight” and a piece from the pianist’s “My Spanish Heart” album.

Everything was played with brisk efficiency, despite what seems to be an endemic Corea problem of inadequate rehearsal time. And, though he approaches Mozart, Bartok and Powell with a very similar touch, there’s no denying the remarkable breadth of his skills. But one can only ponder how much more remarkable Corea might be if he focused in on one or two of the many stylistic arenas that fascinate his eclectic musical mind.