A specially-priced box set in ECM's Old and New Masters Series brings together all of Chick Corea's ECM solo piano recordings, in an era when Chick is once again playing solo concerts. The label's distinguished solo piano tradition began with Corea's two volumes of 'Piano Improvisations', recorded at the beginning of the 70s. In 1983, he recorded another solo project, 'Children's Songs', with twenty short compositions for piano.
All three albums were hits in their original incarnations, with the award-winning first volume of Piano Improvisations selling over 250,000 copies. Both Piano Improvisations albums are newly re-mastered from analog sources.
This was something entirely new, US journalist Neil Tesser recalls in his liner notes. An album of free-flowing solo piano music untethered from the old forms. In 1971, taking time of from his schedule with fire-breathing avant-garde band Circle, Chick Corea responded to ECM producer Manfred Eicher's request for a solo album, and recorded enough material for two discs in an extremely spontaneous session which adds up to a kind of self-portrait of the artist. Many of his enthusiasms are revealed here - from a love of Thelonious Monk to influences from classical music and contemporary composition - e.g. harmonies echoing Ravel and Debussy. There is also a first sighting of Chick's Sometime Ago, soon to be an important tune for the Return To Forever band.
Chick's Children's Songs have been compared by some critics to Bart�k's Mikrokosmos: perfect miniatures of deceptive simplicity. Corea: I became intrigued with the idea of making musical portraits. And children were my favourite subjects to portray. A few of the Children's Songs had been previewed by Corea in versions with Gary Burton, but the 1983 session marked the first time that he had played and recorded the entire cycle.
Personnel: Chick Corea (piano), CD3 track 20: Ida Kavafian (violin), Fred Sherry (cello)
