Chick Corea & Bela Fleck Remembrance 180g 2LP

When the 18-time Grammy® Award-winning banjoist Béla Fleck speaks of his years-long collaboration with the late pianist Chick Corea, he can sound like a bashful student musician, still obviously in awe of the jazz titan whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the '70s. "I just feel so lucky to have played with him in such an intimate way, and to have gotten to know him so well," Fleck says.

Remembrance, a 2024 double album, serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that Fleck and Corea first showcased at album length with 2007's Latin Grammy-winning The Enchantment. It's also a crucial addendum to Corea's legacy, featuring three previously unreleased Corea compositions as well as five short free improvisations, or impromptus, that Fleck has infused with written music. Recorded both in concert, during the duo's final tour dates in 2019, and via traded sound files, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Remembrance runs the stylistic gamut — from Fleck tunes like the majestic "The Otter Creek Incident" and "Juno," a winsome tribute to his son, through clairvoyant interpretations of Thelonious Monk and Scarlatti, to challenging exercises, like Fleck's "Small Potatoes," that evoke Corea's unsung work in the jazz avant-garde. "We pushed this duo to a new place before we ran out of time," says Fleck, who produced Remembrance. "We have here another cool look at Chick Corea, at the different ways that he can play that we wouldn't have had. There's a lot of great Chick Corea out there, and this is different."

Ultimately, Corea's unreleased tunes are perhaps the most affecting element of the set. Those pieces include "Enut Nital" (or Latin Tune, spelled backwards); "Continuance," an older work that resurfaced in the duo's setlist; and the bittersweet dance of the title track. "'Remembrance' is just one of those perfect Chick Corea tunes," Fleck says. "It sounds to me like a New Orleans funeral march, even though it has a Latin component, like everything he did tended to."

Corea's death in 2021, of cancer at age 79, devastated the jazz community, who saw the pianist as a constant international presence, a vibrant musician who never ceased touring and recording. "It was a deep shock," says Fleck, who also released an inspired live project with Corea, Two, in 2015. "It was one of the special relationships in my life. He was just so kind to me, and so helpful, and I learned so much from him." "He found the good in everything," Fleck adds. "I'm just so glad to be a part of this — glad I could be with him, and glad there's more to share."