VARIETY
By RICHARD S. GINELL
(Catalina Bar and Grill; 225 seats; $50 top) Presented inhouse.
Band: Chick Corea, Eric Marienthal, Frank Gambale, Victor Wooten, Dave Weckl. Opened and reviewed Dec. 18, 2007. Closes Dec. 23.
The atmosphere was festive in the packed Catalina Bar and Grill on a rainy Tuesday night, and Chick Corea playfully invited the audience to do pretty much whatever they wanted at this so-called rehearsal. Yet the musicmaking was anything but ad hoc or casual, for this edition of Chick's Elektric Band roared, sighed and carried on with remarkable internal discipline and intuition, like a single instrument.
The band opened a weeklong stand at the nitery three years after the release of the first Elektric Band album in a decade, "To the Stars" (Stretch/Concord). In some ways, this is now a back-to-the-future band, for the lineup of musicians is almost identical to that of the Elektric Band of the 1980s, with bassist Victor Wooten the only new replacement. Also, Corea loaded one keyboard stack with modified or new versions of old instruments that he played in the jazz-rock 1970s.
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