Chick Corea started the night by listing the audience rights. As artists, he noted, he and Bela Fleck have their rights. "We do whatever we want," he shrugged.
"If you need to make or receive and cell phone calls, go right ahead. You guys who are caught right in the middle, if you want to get up and move around, get up and move around.
"Oh, photographs. Go ahead and wail."
Chick continued to offer photography advice before Bela offered, "This has been a brief announcement by Chick Corea."
This was a sign of the easy-going, light-humored evening that was ahead. When you listen to their music, the pairing makes sense, but when you look at their fans, it doesn't. Either way, Bela Fleck and Chick Corea make a natural duo. Genres fly about from song to song, stanza to stanza. With 20 Grammys between them -- both scored again at this year's awards -- a Fleck/Corea show is the headiest ticket in town, if not the hottest. And they've each earned the right to do whatever they want.
Their interaction demonstrates exactly why they play together. They have a mutual appreciation of each others talents and a cross-generational rapport forged by music appreciation. The show -- two sets and an encore -- stretched about two hours, and throughout, Chick and Bela exchanged jokes, both with their words and their instruments, in a playful one-upsmanship. The show began with a dueling legends exchange between the two -- Chick stroking his piano, Bela plucking away at his banjo -- before they came together in a blend of Chick's bebop and Bela's bluegrass.
"For our first encore..." Bela quipped before the second song, Fleck's "Menagerie," which had much more of a Corea sound. It was avant garde free jazz, and throughout, Chick and Bela elicited laughs from the audience as they pretended to trick each other, with Bela plucking the top of his banjo's neck in response to Chick reaching into the piano to pluck the strings directly and Chick slamming the cover down over the keys in response to Bela knocking the back of his banjo. Again, the song eventually evolved into a more cohesive piece, with both musicians demonstrating their dexterity. At the conclusion, Fleck puffed out an exhausted exhale. "I'm in some deep water, here," he said. "But it's good water to be in."
"I know there are musicians out there," Chick said as he shuffled the sheet music before the next tune, "so I just keep showing you the sheet so you know what we're doing."
After a "Thank you!" from the crowd, Bela replied, "I'd like to see the sheet so I know what we're doing."
Like Chick taking the dominant role on Fleck's "Menagerie," Bela took the lead on Chick's "Waltz for Abby," a contemporary jazz song. Chick bobbed and smiled like an excited little boy while he watched Bela's plucking. You get the feeling that they write songs for each other, not just for playing together. It seems like Chick wrote and arranged songs for Bela and vice versa. For the most part, their own compositions largely showcased the other's talents. On "Joban Dna Nopia," another Corea composition, Fleck again took the lead.
The first set closed with a song that started with a classical jazz sound from Bela's banjo, which gradually went back to bluegrass before Chick jumped in for some of that ol' give and take, wink and nudge. The mix of Bela's incomparable bluegrass picking with Chick's bebop-rooted, avant garde-leaning, free jazz-freaky keystrokes gave much of the show a ragtime feel. Two men educated in age-old music who've spent decades advancing it come together and create a nostalgic sound while each continues taking steps forward.
Ary Barroso's "Brazil" opened the second set. The banjo made it a quirkier version than the post-bop recording of the standard that Corea released a few years ago. Just a few days earlier, Guster had covered the tune at the 9:30 Club and made it one of the highlights of their show, but Fleck and Corea made that band seem absolutely pedestrian. The best song of the show was Corea's "Children's Song No. 6," a wild journey through ADHD with an incessant, haunting groove and classical music flourishes.
While their different styles made for a nice musical cocktail, their differing fans did not -- at least not around the bars during the intermission. Corea's older, jazz-aficionado fans held their noses up and rolled their eyes at Bela's younger jamfans, and rightfully so. The younger generation seemed more rude and impatient and pushy than the older generation was intolerant and cranky.
Bela noted that the duo's album will be available in May. "Just in time for the tour," he joked. When the album drops and takes hold of listeners throughout the area, those who were at the Warner Theatre on March 3 will brag, "I saw 'em first."
