Béla Fleck reflects highly on his years-long collaboration with late pianist Chick Corea, sounding like a bashful student musician, still in awe of the jazz legend whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the ’70s. The duo’s album, Remembrance – out May 10 via Thirty Tigers – serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport Fleck and Corea have showcased previously on 2007’s Latin Grammy-winning The Enchantment.
Released just over three years after Corea’s passing, Remembrance serves as an addendum to Corea’s legacy, highlighted by three previously unreleased Corea compositions as well as five short free improvisations, or impromptus, that Fleck has infused with written music.
Recorded both live in concert, over the duo’s final tour dates in 2019, Remembrance was crafted by trading sound files amid the Covid pandemic. Running a stylistic gamut, the album features Corea’s unreleased tunes “Enut Nital” (“Latin Tune,” spelled backwards), and “Continuance,” an older work that resurfaced in the duo’s setlist, as well as new Fleck compositions, including “The Otter Creek Incident” and “Juno,” a winsome tribute to his son, the channeling Thelonious Monk and Scarlatti, and challenging exercises such as “Small Potatoes,” which evokes Corea’s work in the jazz avant-garde.
When the 18-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist reflected on his time collaborating with Corea, Fleck said, “I just feel so lucky to have played with him in such an intimate way, and to have gotten to know him so well.”
The title track, a Corea composition “Remembrance,” is one of the last pieces of music Chick ever recorded. “It’s just one of those perfect Chick Corea tunes,” Fleck says. “It sounds to me like a New Orleans funeral march, even though it has a Latin component, like everything he did tended to.”
Corea’s death in 2021 devastated the jazz community, who saw the pianist as a constant international presence, a vibrant musician who never ceased touring and recording. “It was a deep shock,” says Fleck, who also released an inspired live project with Corea, Two, in 2015. “It was one of the special relationships in my life. He was just so kind to me, and so helpful, and I learned so much from him.”
“We pushed this duo to a new place before we ran out of time,” says Fleck, who produced Remembrance. “We have here another cool look at Chick Corea, at the different ways that he can play that we wouldn’t have had. There’s a lot of great Chick Corea out there, and this is different.”
“I know it sounds unlikely. But it really happened. Once upon a time, I played banjo in a duo with Chick Corea.”
“He found the good in everything. I’m just so glad to be a part of this — glad I could be with him, and glad there’s more to share.”
Béla Fleck
The album is available now for preorder.
Chick Corea & Béla Fleck Remembrance track listing
1. The Otter Creek Incident (Béla Fleck)
2. impromptu III: march hare
3. Enut Nital (Chick Corea)
4. impromptu II: mock turtle
5. Bemsha Swing (Thelonious Monk, Denzil Best)
6. Lucky Bounce
7. impromptu I: cheshire
8. Remembrance (Chick Corea)
9. Juno (Béla Fleck)
10. Scarlatti Sonatas (Domenico Scarlatti, arr.. By Corea, Fleck)
11. impromptu V: jabberwocky
12. Small Potatoes
13. Continuance (Chick Corea)
14. impromptu IV: gentleman fish
“With Béla, our duet has become so simpatico, and comfortable–comfortable spiritually. And not meaning that we’re not adventuring musically, but I know that whatever we’re going to do is going to be musical.”
Chick Corea, speaking about Bela Fleck, in 2015
Béla Fleck Tour Dates
April 3 Buffalo, NY Kleinhans Music Hall ^
April 4 Oakville, Ontario Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts ^
April 5 Kingston, Ontario Kingston Grand Theatre ^
April 6 Stowe, VT Spruce Peak PAC ^
April 9 Ottawa, Ontario Centrepointe ^
April 10 St. Catharines, Ontario Partridge Hall ^
April 12 State College, PA The State Theatre ^
April 13 Goshen, IN Goshen College ^
April 14 Lexington, KY Lexington Opera House ^
April 24 Skokie, IL North Shore PAC *
April 25 Kohler, WI Kohler Memorial Theatre *
April 26 Royal Oak, MI Royal Oak Music Theatre *
April 27 Wilkesboro, NC MerleFest *
April 28 New Orleans, LA New Orleans Jazz Festival *
May 4 New York, NY Carnegie Hall (Béla Fleck: Rhythm, Raga & Rhapsody)
June 13 Groton, MA Groton Hill Music Center #
June 14 Kingston, NY Ulster PAC #
June 15 Hartford, CT The Bushnell #
June 16 Kennett Square, PA Longwood Gardens #
June 18 Boulder, CO Chautauqua Amphitheater #
June 20 Telluride, CO Telluride Bluegrass Festival (house band)
June 21 Telluride, CO Telluride Bluegrass Festival #
July 12 Vancouver Island Musicfest #
July 16 Breckenridge, CO Riverwalk Center #
July 17 Aspen, CO Aspen Music Festival #
July 18 Santa Fe, NM The Lensic PAC #
July 27 Lyons, CO RockyGrass ^
Oct 13 Pelham, TN CaveFest ^
*My Bluegrass Heart
^Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn
~Béla Fleck w/ Symphony
# Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain featuring Rakesh Chaurasia
