My review of SFJAZZ Collective's The Music of Chick Corea & New Compositions, today @All About Jazz.


Some things change, some things stay the same. After two successive recordings and tours with an identical lineup—a first in its now 10-year history—the SFJAZZ Collective once again undergoes some minor personnel shifts. More important, however, is that Live SFJAZZ Center 2013: The Music of Chick Corea & New Compositions comes a full two years after Live in New York Season 8—Music of Stevie Wonder (SFJAZZ, 2011), the first time that the collective has not devoted itself to the music of a different composer every year, instead, touring the Stevie Wonder music from 2011 into 2012.


With each member of the octet contributing an innovative arrangement of some of Wonder's best music along with a newly minted piece composed in the spirit of Wonder, it also represented the first time that SFJAZZ has stepped outside the clear boundaries of jazz to perform songs by a musician who, while, clearly jazz-informed, was unequivocally a soul/R&B artist. Not that there's anything wrong with that; still, it's no surprise that every member of the collective managed to make the Wonder tune they chose to arrange and bring it into a distinctive, modern kind of mainstream. It's been one of the trademarks of the collective since its inception in 2004, when it paid tribute to Ornette Coleman. For the collective's first two years, SFJAZZ released both limited edition multi-disc collections with the entire set list, as well as a wider release album condensed down to a single CD, first with SFJAZZ Collective (Nonesuch, 2005), and followed by SFJAZZ Collective 2 (Nonesuch, 2006), which paid tribute to the music of John Coltrane.


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Happy New Year everyone!