With this reunion, Chick Corea and Steve Gadd don’t just set their solid friendship in stone, but rekindle the flame of the jazz fusion with funky tendancies from the 70s - when the genre was reigning; both for the best and for the worst, by the way… For the occasion, the pianist and the drummer have gathered together a strong cast with guitarist and singer Lionel Loueke, saxophonist and flautist Steve Wilson, bass player Carlitos Del Puerto and percussionist Luisito Quintero. The first time that Corea and Gadd's paths crossed was in 1965, when the former briefly joined Chuck Mangione’s band, in which the latter was performing. In the ten years that followed, Corea became one of the most influential keyboard players and composers of his generation. At the same time, Gadd was quickly recognized as a big name in the drum community, astounding Paul Simon and Steely Dan among others. In 1972, Chick Corea decided to transform his group Return to Forever, with which he had until then explored the richness of Latin and Brazilian music, into a jazz rock band of which Steve Gadd became the first drummer. His numerous commitments as a studio musician would prove incompatible with the long tour planned by the band, which didn't prevent him from later taking part in the recording of several of Corea’s albums such as The Leprechaun released in 1976, My Spanish Heart, a brilliant blend of electric jazz and Latin rhythms (whose echo can be heard throughout Chinese Butterfly) and Three Quartets in 1981, a profound shift in Corea’s composing career. When the two musicians finally meet up in Chick Corea’s studio in Florida at the beginning of 2017, the alchemy was once again immediate, propelling the composer into a creative frenzy that quickly gave birth to two tracks, Like I Was Sayin’ and Gadd-zooks. “I’ve always enjoyed composing music for a band, and hearing what Steve would do with my compositions, explains Chick Corea. When we started playing those two tunes together, it felt so good that we started to talk about putting a band together.” Though he’s credited as the only composer of most of the eight tracks of the album, Corea maintains that the record is the result of teamwork and that it would never have seen the light of day without Gadd’s rhythmic sensitivity. “It’s a co-creation, the pianist insists. I write the compositions, and Steve puts together the form of the rhythm, which is the backbone of the band. In my music, rhythm is everything – if the music doesn't have the right emotion and rhythm, it can’t live.” It’s a sincere complicity that gives birth to an album filled with emotion and virtuosity. It’s worth noting that Phil Bailey, the great falsetto from the original cast of Earth, Wind & Fire, makes a strong appearance on this record which is in phase with its cover, where the instruments of the different members are arranged to form a butterfly: two pianos form the wings, the drums the head and the thorax. © CM/Qobuz

Programs mixing Eastern and Western materials are common enough, and even those showing the deep interwovenness of East and West, such as those of Jordi Savall, have become more common. Still, it is hard to top this release by tenor Karim Sulayman and guitarist Sean Shibe for sheer ambition. The booklet notes by Olivia Giovetti amplify the idea in a dozen different ways, with extensive reference to Edward Said and to the Arabic ancestry of the guitar, but the basic premise is that "shoehorning things into a forced binary of 'East' and 'West' eliminates a spectrum of identities more slippery than settled." Nearly everything here cuts both ways, from a Dowland song accompanied by guitar in the role of the lute (oud), to Sephardic and Arab-Andalusian songs, to a popular song by vocalist Fairuz that draws on Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. One key idea is that musical borrowings are always filtered through the borrower in a kind of imperfect recollection, something explicitly affirmed by Benjamin Britten in connection with his Songs from the Chinese. Many of these strands converge in the Sufi Dance of Jonathan Harvey, a work that the album offers as underrated; listeners will be ready to agree. One might not necessarily choose these players as interpreters of the individual works here, but the album, as a whole, is compelling and thought-provoking.© James Manheim /TiVo

Cripple Crow marks a departure for Devendra Banhart. It's obvious from the faux Sgt. Pepper-meets-Incredible String Band freak scene cover photo that something is afoot. The disc is Banhart's first foray from Michael Gira's Young God label, and it's more adventurous than anything he's done before. This is not to imply that the set is a slick, over-produced affair, but it is a significant change. The instrumental, stylistic, and textural range on this 23-song set is considerably wider than it's been in the past. Working with Noah Georgeson and Thom Monahan, a backing band of friends known as "the Hairy Fairies", Banhart's crafted something expansive, colorful, and perhaps even accessible to a wider array of listeners. There are layered vocals and choruses of backing singers, as well as piano and flutes on the gorgeous "I Heard Somebody Say," while the electric guitar and drums fuelling "Long Haired Child," with its reverb-drenched backing vocals, is primitive, percussive, and dark. There is also the 21st century psychedelic jug band stomp of the second single, "I Feel Just Like a Child," that crosses the nursery rhyme melodics of Mississippi John Hurt with the naughty boy swagger of Marc Bolan. There are also five songs in Spanish, Banhart's native tongue, in a style that's a cross between flamenco and son. The title cut, "Cripple Crow," is one of the most haunting anti-war songs around. In it, Banhart places a new generation in the firing line, and urges them to resist not with violence, but with pacifistic refusal. A lone acoustic guitar, hand drums, a backing chorus, and a lilting, muted flute all sift in with one another to weave a song that feels more like a prayer. The lone cover here, of Simon Diaz's "Luna de Margaerita," drips with the rawest kind of emotion. Ultimately, Cripple Crow is a roughly stitched tapestry; it is rich, varied, wild, irreverent, simple, and utterly joyous to listen to.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

With this reunion, Chick Corea and Steve Gadd don’t just set their solid friendship in stone, but rekindle the flame of the jazz fusion with funky tendancies from the 70s - when the genre was reigning; both for the best and for the worst, by the way… For the occasion, the pianist and the drummer have gathered together a strong cast with guitarist and singer Lionel Loueke, saxophonist and flautist Steve Wilson, bass player Carlitos Del Puerto and percussionist Luisito Quintero. The first time that Corea and Gadd's paths crossed was in 1965, when the former briefly joined Chuck Mangione’s band, in which the latter was performing. In the ten years that followed, Corea became one of the most influential keyboard players and composers of his generation. At the same time, Gadd was quickly recognized as a big name in the drum community, astounding Paul Simon and Steely Dan among others. In 1972, Chick Corea decided to transform his group Return to Forever, with which he had until then explored the richness of Latin and Brazilian music, into a jazz rock band of which Steve Gadd became the first drummer. His numerous commitments as a studio musician would prove incompatible with the long tour planned by the band, which didn't prevent him from later taking part in the recording of several of Corea’s albums such as The Leprechaun released in 1976, My Spanish Heart, a brilliant blend of electric jazz and Latin rhythms (whose echo can be heard throughout Chinese Butterfly) and Three Quartets in 1981, a profound shift in Corea’s composing career. When the two musicians finally meet up in Chick Corea’s studio in Florida at the beginning of 2017, the alchemy was once again immediate, propelling the composer into a creative frenzy that quickly gave birth to two tracks, Like I Was Sayin’ and Gadd-zooks. “I’ve always enjoyed composing music for a band, and hearing what Steve would do with my compositions, explains Chick Corea. When we started playing those two tunes together, it felt so good that we started to talk about putting a band together.” Though he’s credited as the only composer of most of the eight tracks of the album, Corea maintains that the record is the result of teamwork and that it would never have seen the light of day without Gadd’s rhythmic sensitivity. “It’s a co-creation, the pianist insists. I write the compositions, and Steve puts together the form of the rhythm, which is the backbone of the band. In my music, rhythm is everything – if the music doesn't have the right emotion and rhythm, it can’t live.” It’s a sincere complicity that gives birth to an album filled with emotion and virtuosity. It’s worth noting that Phil Bailey, the great falsetto from the original cast of Earth, Wind & Fire, makes a strong appearance on this record which is in phase with its cover, where the instruments of the different members are arranged to form a butterfly: two pianos form the wings, the drums the head and the thorax. © CM/Qobuz