It’s impossible to gauge, of course, but I ran the idea past keyboardist and composer Chick Corea that he has played more individual notes than any other jazz pianist in recorded history. He laughed at the notion, but who would realistically be in the running against him? Herbie Hancock, perhaps, and maybe Oscar Peterson. Cecil Taylor arguably produces more notes from his solos and has been around for a generation longer, but he hasn’t toured as tirelessly as Corea, who brings the jazz- rock fusion monster Return To Forever IV to the Paramount Theatre on Saturday.
“I’ve got to get my note meter,” he told me from a bus on which he eternally travels. “It’s an interesting question, and I’d love to have the answer.”
His own bands are the stuff of ear-overwhelming legend over the past 40 years, and you can’t trace back on the history of amplified or cutting-edge jazz without running across Corea’s name in the credits somewhere. His career began as a sideman for Stan Getz and Miles Davis before co-founding a group with the visionary saxophonist Anthony Braxton (Circle) and the formation of the different incarnations of Return To Forever. Corea put RTF on hold for many years in order to explore other musical obsessions, but he’s come blazing back with his arsenal of electric keyboards and the kinship of exhibitionist collaborators. At age 70 he is in the midst of something like an energetic resurgence.
This edition of RTF includes bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White, like most editions of the band, but also on board this year are guitarist Frank Gambale (he spent years in Corea’s Elektric Band) and one time Frank Zappa sideman/Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, who even longtime fans will be surprised to find out has never toured with Corea until now.
“He’s a favorite of mine,” Corea said of Ponty before telling me that he does not consider himself to be the leader of the group. “I’m the founder but this is a quintet of master musicians. Everyone is playing their hearts out.”
I wondered if after millions of notes and 16 Grammy Awards Corea has altered his percussive approach to the piano and other keyboard instruments. In other words, has he mellowed as a performer?
“I usually don’t look at it that way,” he said. “I’ve been rolling along on a string of making music from year to year, as we go through a techno robot ‘1984’ civilization.”
I’m still not sure exactly what he meant, but I liked the way that he said it. And ultimately, that is as good a way as any to sum up Corea’s multifaceted approach to music.
(Return To Forever IV, 8p.m. Saturday, Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm Place. $49.50-$129.50. Tickets are available through .)
More shows.
The What’s Cookin’ Big Band appears at Jazz@Jacks beginning at 5p.m. today. .  organist and former Denverite Pat Bianchi returns home to Dazzle on Thursday and Friday. . .trumpeter Ron Miles plays a benefit for Mission Supports (an organization helping area adults with developmental disabilities) at Dazzle on August 28. . .Vail Jazz Foundation’s Labor Day Weekend Party is shaping up as one of their most promising, with pianists Monty Alexander and Bill Cunliffe, the Clayton Brothers Quintet, vibraphonist Jay Hoggard, drummer Lewis Nash, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, trumpeter Tyrell Stafford and many others from September 1-5 at the Vail Marriott Ballroom. Find out more at . . .
