Track Listing

1. Monk's Dream
2. But Beautiful
3. Blue Monk
4. Ask Me Now
5. Thinking of You
6. Yesterdays
7. Dusk in Sandi
8. It Could Happen to You
9. 'Round Midnight
10. So in Love
11. How Deep Is the Ocean?
12. Obilivion
13. Brazil

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57124 in Music
• Released on: 2000-06-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Amazon.com
This collection of 13 unaccompanied piano pieces is the companion disc to Corea's simultaneously released Solo Piano: Originals. Like its sibling, Standards was recorded at concerts in Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan in November 1999. Here, though, Corea chooses an array of mostly well-known tunes by jazz greats Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell and Tin Pan Alley wizards Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. The pianist evokes alternately brilliant-then-darker touch, clear-as-a-bell articulation, and often-astounding imagination as he weaves in and out of these timeless melodies, keeping thematic phrases close at hand and never allowing the improvisation to totally take over. It's impressive, alluring stuff. Monk is represented by four pieces, from the wondrous "'Round Midnight" to the less-heard "Monk's Dream." Corea uses thickly textured Monklike chords, leaping statements, and clanging intervals to both sound Monkish and be himself. Powell's "Dusk in Sandi" is a delicate, introspective piece, rendered with telling tenderness, while Bud's "Oblivion" is in contrast to its title: upbeat and peppy. "But Beautiful" is one ballad where Corea sways between the theme and delicious asides full of sumptuous melody; "Thinking of You" is another. Kern's poignant "Yesterdays" has a few moments of classical feeling, Berlin's "How Deep is the Ocean" has even more and is rather abstract at points. "It Could Happen to You" is a medium-tempo tale told with prancing single-note lines, descending chords, and gushed passages, and the closing "Brazil" is happily straightforward. --Zan Stewart

Customer Reviews

"Thumbs up" from a solo piano jazz devotee
Working solo lets Chick Corea show his more playful and reflective sides, and the result is delightful. On these tracks, you enjoy hearing how he shapes and nudges the "standards" into unexpected forms while ceaselessly experimenting, yet not taking any of it too seriously. Mellower than the angular Brad Mehldau, smarter than those other Gen-X jazzers, sweeter than eccentric Keith Jarrett, and most sincere in its tacit homage to grand master Bill Evans, this pleasurable CD is worth owning.

standards by chick corea
great display of corea's virtuosity, and far from what he did with Return To Forever.

Chick Digs In
Released as a companion to the Originals disk, this CD features Corea at the piano digging into familiar jazz fare. Surprisingly (at least to me, as I had never thought of Corea as someone who would play much Monk), there are four cuts by Thelonious: "Monk's Dream," "Blue Monk," "Ask Me Now," and "'Round Midnight." It is fascinating to hear how Corea stamps these songs with his own personality; you know they are Monk, but you also know they are Corea. The music was recorded live in various concerts across Europe and Japan, and the audience reaction adds to the ambience.

For most jazz fans, this disk will probably be more readily appealing than the Originals disk, but Corea fans will definitely want to pick up both (as a bonus, both CDs have excellent liner notes, in which Corea discusses the music and his approach to the various cuts). A couple of years or so before this, Corea had released a group CD dedicated to the music of Bud Powell -- hearing this disk makes me hope he will consider releasing a disk dedicated to the music of Thelonious Monk, whose dream lives on.