There’s a 43-year age distinction between jazz-and-beyond icon Chick Corea and emerging famous person Gerald Clayton. However the mutual admiration between those two genre-leaping keyboard dynamos — who every carry out in San Diego at the identical night time subsequent week at separate live shows with their respective bands — simply transcends time.
“He’s an important younger musician,” Corea, 78, mentioned of Clayton, who plays a Wednesday Athenaeum Jazz at TSRI live performance together with his quartet.
“Gerald is likely one of the guys who evokes me after I pay attention him. He has his personal method of doing it and discovering his personal voice. And he’s an excessively vibrant man. I in reality like him so much, and I like his enjoying.”
Clayton, 35, is much more effusive, to the purpose that he recommended this text must center of attention extra on 22-time Grammy Award winner Corea than on him.
“Chick is a legend — the maestro! — and has been an enormous inspiration for me since I used to be an adolescent,” mentioned four-time Grammy nominee Clayton of Corea, who plays Wednesday on the Balboa Theater together with his band Trilogy.
“Speak about forging your personal method within the song and in reality having your personal voice at the tool! It’s implausible to witness Chick in live performance, which I maximum not too long ago did in Europe. His devotion to the instant is in reality particular, and he’s prepared to percentage all of himself in his song. He’s completely a hero of mine.”
By means of accident, no longer simplest are Corea and Clayton each taking the degree right here Wednesday, their performances open the autumn seasons of, respectively, the Athenaeum Jazz at TSRI live performance collection and the Los angeles Jolla Song Society’s fall season.
Flexible jazz-and-beyond keyboard nice Chick Corea is these days composing his first trombone concerto for the New York Philharmonic.
(Roberto Serra / Getty Pictures)
‘In rhythm with the sea’
Those two acclaimed keyboardists even have a shared cherished of water actions, albeit no longer the similar ones.
Corea swims day-to-day, be it within the ocean close to his Florida house, in a pool, or anyplace handy when he’s on excursion. Clayton, who not too long ago moved again to his local Los Angeles from New York, is an avid surfer. His go back to Southern California used to be impressed partly to have day-to-day get entry to to within reach waves.
“Swimming is one in all my go-to workout routines,” mentioned Corea, who seems significantly more youthful than his age.
“I’ve every other workout routines for my posture, quite simple workout routines, that stay you upright and stay again ache away,” he endured. “We’ve grow to be this kind of sedentary society sitting at computer systems and pianos, and on planes and buses. So I attempt to steadiness that with sufficient workout, particularly swimming. Now not dangerous, thus far!”
Does Corea ever get musical concepts whilst swimming?
“If I’m operating on a brand new piece and no longer close to the piano, I’ll use my creativeness and my skill to challenge an orchestra or a trio (in my thoughts), and I’ll run them thru their paces. It’s roughly the similar factor I do at a keyboard, apart from and not using a keyboard! But when I’m swimming, I really like to only swim.”
Clayton, in a similar fashion, loves to surf.
“I attempt to get out within the water each day after I’m house,” he mentioned, talking from his Los Angeles house.
“The sea may be very cleaning and clearing. It seems like not anything in reality issues whilst you’re a speck of mud floating within the ocean. Surfing seems like an unending adventure, the similar method song does. On a in reality just right day, whilst you’re in rhythm with the sea and are in simply the easiest spot, there’s one thing concerning the drift this is similar to the drift in song.”
That drift, and the thrilling new musical vistas they are able to open for performers and listeners alike, is a continuing for each Corea and Clayton as instrumentalists, composers and band leaders. Their respective histories are a testomony to their ability, ingenuity and dependable sense of aural journey.
A Massachusetts local, Corea rose to world prominence within the past due 1960s when he changed Herbie Hancock in Miles Davis’ fabled quintet.
Corea’s credit on the time already integrated collaborations with such greats as Mongo Santamaria, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and previous San Diego vibraphonist Dave Pike, as smartly two vintage 1968 solo albums, “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” and “Tones for Joan’s Bones.”
By means of 1972, he used to be main the primary version of Go back To Endlessly, a genre-leaping band that will have a huge have an effect on — Prince used to be a large fan — in that decade and past. Corea’s stylistic versatility has observed him expertly carry out with an array of jazz giants and symphony orchestras, in addition to everybody from classical piano celebrity Lang Lang and Cat Stevens to the rock band Foo Warring parties and banjo wonder Béla Fleck.
Corea is these days operating on two commissioned items: a trombone concerto for the New York Philharmonic and a a work commemorating Hungarian composer Béla Bartok. The latter shall be carried out by means of Corea’s present band, which groups him with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade. Their very good new Brotherly love Jazz album, the 2-CD are living set “Trilogy 2,” is the sequel to their 3-CD are living set, 2014’s “Trilogy.”
“The best way I proceed to extend my abilities is so as to add a ability I don’t have,” Corea mentioned, talking from the Florida house he stocks together with his spouse, former Go back To Endlessly and Mahavishnu Orchestra singer singer Gayle Moran. “And the way in which you upload a ability is by means of onerous paintings, like the rest. You roll up your sleeves, get into it and do it, slightly than theorize about it.
“If I’m no longer finding out some new abilities, or honing my current abilities, I’m useless. If there’s no longer some new problem to open up some other vista in existence, I’m useless. Another way, why stand up within the morning? So I’m finding out and rising, and I’m extra passionate than ever.”
Emerging jazz pianist Gerald Clayton not too long ago moved from New York again to his place of birth of Los Angeles, largely in order that he may surf as steadily as his busy time table lets in.
(Courtesy photograph)
Composing and stretching
Clayton used to be born in Holland. He’s the son of bassist John Clayton, who’s the co-leader of the top-ranked Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and inspired his son to discover song at an early age.
A classically skilled pianist, Gerald steadily carried out together with his father’s quartet rising up. A lot in call for as a keyboardist for recording dates and live shows, the more youthful Clayton has collaborated with a huge vary of artists. His maximum notable musical companions have integrated sax legend Charles Lloyd, Diana Krall, former Miles Davis guitarist John Scofield, Michael Bublé, trumpeter Roy Hargrove and the Monterey Jazz Competition On Excursion ensemble, for which he served as song director in 2016 and 2017.
Like Corea, Clayton may be a commissioned composer. In 2016, he carried out the song he wrote for for the Duke College-commissioned “Piedmont Blues” which celebrates that rural southern acoustic blues custom and explores the horrific legacy of slavery that it reflected. The traditionally impressed opus featured a gospel choir and a nine-piece ensemble that used to be led by means of Clayton and showcased famous singer René Marie and faucet dancer Maurice Chestnut.
In April, Clayton and his quintet debuted his “White Towns: A Musical Tribute to Charles White” on the Los Angeles Museum of Fresh Artwork, which commissioned Clayton to put in writing it.
“I spent about two years researching and crafting ‘Piedmont Blues,’ and visiting historians and elders in North Carolina and South Carolina, in order that I may be informed concerning the greats and the architects of that musical taste. It used to be indisputably a deep dive,” mentioned Clayton, who would possibly come with a variety from ‘Piedmont Blues’ at his Wednesday live performance right here.
“The piece displays at the blues as a philosophy past the Piedmont taste, which has a large number of ragtime parts, and examines the very human wish to free up our feelings — the thrill and sorrows. And, in that procedure, the blues offers again to us.”
Corea has launched 5 new albums previously two years, no longer counting “Trilogy 2,” which is due out Friday. Clayton’s fourth album as a band chief is due out early subsequent yr and used to be recorded are living on the fabled Village Forefront membership in New York. He’s additionally composing the ranking for an upcoming movie documentary.
“With my band,” Clayton mentioned, “it’s a spirit that they convey to the song. With a lot of these guys, there’s a sense that — whilst you’re enjoying — it’s no longer for the rest shallow, however for a possibility to serve the song. We attempt to move deep and check out to raised ourselves, in order that we will be able to deliver the power within the room we’re acting in to a top position.
“It’s the spirit greater than the rest, and the fellows within the band problem me. They may make me query my very own ideas, apply the place my very own convenience degree is, and be prepared to lend a hand me push my very own barriers additional out.”
“What makes a band distinctive,” Corea concluded, “are the gamers. And there’s completely not anything like enjoying with Christian and Brian, as a result of who they’re and what they draw out of me. The musicians are the original factor and the musicians I play with are the meals for my existence. They encourage me to put in writing for them and play for them.
“For me to make the song I like, I must be pals with my musicians. With musicians I really like, we will be able to get on and keep in touch in combination, and that suggests it may be amusing to make song in combination. If it ain’t amusing, it’s no longer value it!”
Athenaeum Jazz at TSRI gifts The Gerald Clayton Quartet, that includes Logan Richardson, Joe Sanders & Kendrick Scott
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
The place: The Auditorium at The Scripps Analysis Institute, 10620 John Jay Hopkins Power, Los angeles Jolla
Tickets: $35 (individuals), $40 (non-members)
Telephone: (858) 454-5872
On-line: ljathenaeum.org
Los angeles Jolla Song Society gifts Chick Corea Trilogy, that includes Christian McBride & Brian Blade
When: eight p.m. Wednesday
The place: Balboa Theater, 868 Fourth Ave., Gaslamp Quarter
Tickets: $59-$102
Telephone: (858) 459-3724
On-line: ljms.org