Arguably (and not many would argue) the greatest living jazz pianist, Chick Corea has had a long and highlight-filled career, beginning with his tenure with the great Miles Davis when Davis was defining the jazz-rock synthesis, through Corea's own breakthrough jazz fusion recordings and his subsequent journeys into everything from the post-bop avant-garde to classical and new age, and his restless and musically inclusive spirit has always shone through. This expansive live release finds Corea working with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade, and the three have an uncanny connection, filling space with gorgeous and subtle phrasings, gliding through all manner of styles with a seemingly effortless elegance, grace, and freshness. The three-disc Trilogy was recorded live at tour stops in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, California, and in Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Turkey, and Japan, by Corea's longtime (since 1975) recording engineer Bernie Kirsh, who has provided the trio with a bright, warm production sound that allows each player's slightest shift and voicing to come through with clear precision. In spite of the various locations, this set has a remarkable sonic coherency. It might be too much to call this set a summation of Corea's legacy, but it does have the slight feel of a retrospective collectio. The band revisits classic Corea compositions like "Spain" and covering several tunes from the Great American Songbook, a couple of Thelonious Monk tunes ("Blue Monk" allows bassist McBride to particularly shine), a previously unissued Corea composition, the half-hour "Piano Sonata: The Moon," where the trio shows its ability to move between scored and improvised sections with breathtaking ease, and even a take on classical Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's "Op. 11, No. 9" that manages to breathe and flow without sounding like a forced fusion of classical and jazz. There are guests on three tracks, flutist Jorge Pardo and guitarist Niño Josele on "My Foolish Heart" and "Spain," and vocalist Gayle Moran Corea, the pianist's wife, on "Someday My Prince Will Come," but it's the three primary musicians who drive everything. Not exactly a holding pattern, and not exactly a career summation, Trilogy will surely please and delight Corea's many fans.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

This post-Return to Forever Chick Corea LP is a bit of a mixed bag. Corea is heard on his many keyboards during an atmospheric "The Woods," interacts with a string section on "Tweedle Dee," features a larger band plus singer Gayle Moran on a few other songs and even welcomes fellow keyboardist Herbie Hancock for the "Mad Hatter Rhapsody." The most interesting selection, a quartet rendition of "Humpty Dumpty" with tenorman Joe Farrell set the stage for his next project, Friends. Overall, this is an interesting and generally enjoyable release.© Scott Yanow /TiVo

Although there really hasn't been another pianist quite like Bill Evans since his untimely death in 1980, Chick Corea was probably the one best suited to make this fine and heartfelt tribute album. Corea does several things especially well here: first, he wisely chose two of Evans' most celebrated sidemen (bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Paul Motian) to join him for the trio date. Second, he does an excellent job of invoking Evans' musical spirit without giving in to the temptation to slavishly imitate his distinctive playing style. And third, he mixes up the program nicely, including the bop classic "Hot House," Thelonious Monk's "Little Rootie Tootie," and original compositions by each member of the trio, alongside such necessary Evans and Evans-associated standards as "Gloria's Step" and "Alice in Wonderland." The combination of a sprawling two-disc configuration and the live setting (the album was recorded over the course of a two-week stint at the Blue Note in New York) means that there's plenty of room for everyone to stretch out, which doesn't always yield dividends: no matter how impressionistic it got, Evans' playing never seemed aimless, but Corea's sometimes does on tracks like "Rhapsody" and the Motian composition "Mode VI." Still, Corea's aimlessness is always highly listenable, and at its best (which is most of the time), the trio is both tight and thrillingly free; their take on "Hot House," in particular, demonstrates an admirable ability to balance boppish rigor with creative expansiveness. This is a beautiful and loving tribute to one of jazz music's great tragic genuises.© Rick Anderson /TiVo

This is the eponymous debut album from British singer/songwriter Alice Jemima. After gaining a considerable following online, Jemima was picked up by Rob Da Bank's Sunday Best. A mix of pop and subtle electronic beats, the album sees Jemima deliver a collection of quirky indie pop numbers. The singles "Dodged a Bullet" and "Electric" are included.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Arguably (and not many would argue) the greatest living jazz pianist, Chick Corea has had a long and highlight-filled career, beginning with his tenure with the great Miles Davis when Davis was defining the jazz-rock synthesis, through Corea's own breakthrough jazz fusion recordings and his subsequent journeys into everything from the post-bop avant-garde to classical and new age, and his restless and musically inclusive spirit has always shone through. This expansive live release finds Corea working with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade, and the three have an uncanny connection, filling space with gorgeous and subtle phrasings, gliding through all manner of styles with a seemingly effortless elegance, grace, and freshness. The three-disc Trilogy was recorded live at tour stops in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, California, and in Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Turkey, and Japan, by Corea's longtime (since 1975) recording engineer Bernie Kirsh, who has provided the trio with a bright, warm production sound that allows each player's slightest shift and voicing to come through with clear precision. In spite of the various locations, this set has a remarkable sonic coherency. It might be too much to call this set a summation of Corea's legacy, but it does have the slight feel of a retrospective collectio. The band revisits classic Corea compositions like "Spain" and covering several tunes from the Great American Songbook, a couple of Thelonious Monk tunes ("Blue Monk" allows bassist McBride to particularly shine), a previously unissued Corea composition, the half-hour "Piano Sonata: The Moon," where the trio shows its ability to move between scored and improvised sections with breathtaking ease, and even a take on classical Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's "Op. 11, No. 9" that manages to breathe and flow without sounding like a forced fusion of classical and jazz. There are guests on three tracks, flutist Jorge Pardo and guitarist Niño Josele on "My Foolish Heart" and "Spain," and vocalist Gayle Moran Corea, the pianist's wife, on "Someday My Prince Will Come," but it's the three primary musicians who drive everything. Not exactly a holding pattern, and not exactly a career summation, Trilogy will surely please and delight Corea's many fans.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

Apparently, just one primary color was no longer enough to cover the volume of ideas produced by Atlanta, Georgia's Baroness for its third long-playing release, and thus the 2012 follow-up to 2007's Red Album and 2009's Blue Record has become an 18-song double set named Yellow & Green. The irony is there's no obvious cohesive theme or musical direction particular to either color (Green might be a shade more morose, if at all), as each contains an equally schizophrenic array of musical touchstones, too eclectic to easily categorize. In fact, the biggest headline about this release pertains to something else entirely, and that is Baroness' not entirely unexpected evolution into something other than a heavy metal band; one focused on expanding its arsenal of sounds and moods while embracing big choruses and more commercial songwriting tricks targeting maximum immediacy. "March to the Sea," for example, boasts a new wave pulse and singing harmonies à la Big Country, while "Little Things" borrows something from the Cure (and "Sea Lungs" from U2!); the melancholy country of "Green Theme" owes more to the Band than Black Sabbath or anything metallic, for that matter, while the gothic folk of "Twinkler" takes a left-hand path approach to Fleet Foxes' wistful vocal choir; and perhaps most telling, a few cuts like "Cocainium" and "Back Where I Belong" feature keyboards more prominently than guitars. When those six-strings do get plugged in and their Marshalls properly cranked for songs like misleadingly heavy opener "Take My Bones Away," the Thin Lizzy-praising "Board Up the House," or the thunder pop nugget "The Line Between," it's not like they've been stripped of all their cojones and distortion (and these had already been toned down for the Blue Record), but the higher melodic quotient puts them squarely into the hard rock category, at most. And while one can't help but respect Baroness' general bravura and overwhelming success rate on these songs, the band inevitably falls flat on its face now and then, including a second-half stretch spanning the sleepy "Foolsong," the snoring drones of "Collapse," and the New Order horror show "Psalms Alive" (which admittedly, does come alive near the end). In sum: Yellow & Green undertakes such a massive creative leap that only time will tell whether it goes down as a triumph or a blunder. In fairness to Baroness' heavy metal fan constituency, all this experimentation has almost nothing in common with the band's initial, Isis-inspired post-metal EPs; but between the steady maturation displayed by those ensuing color-coded works and the quantity of songs here, both undeniably infectious and innovative, many more fans are bound to embark on the Georgians' strange, strange ride. Chances are, it will get even stranger from here on out.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo