INNER VIEW: Chick Corea, Béla Fleck
join talents in enchanting acoustic duo

Banjo player Béla Fleck has performed in some of the most memorable concerts in recent years at Eisenhower Auditorium. Each time he’s played with a different partner or ensemble—with his band The Flecktones, with bassist Edgar Meyer, and most recently as part of the Center for the Performing Arts-produced Banjo Summit.

With each new encounter, Fleck provides further proof of his genius. It’s something of a miracle the many kinds of great music—from bluegrass to jazz to classical—he coaxes from the humble banjo. He’ll do it again this month, teaming this time with keyboard wizard Chick Corea in an acoustic duo concert at 8 p.m. Saturday, February 16.

Fleck was mesmerized when, as a teenager, he first heard Corea in concert around 1974. He could not have imagined then that he’d one day perform and record with the keyboardist.

“It’s pretty much a dream come true, because he is one of my musical heroes,” says Fleck, speaking by phone from his home in Nashville. “And he’s as good as I thought he was when I was a teenager—even better. Sometimes, as you get to know people, as you get older, you realize, oh well, now that I’m a serious musician, a full-time musician, I actually like his playing, but it doesn’t knock me out.…But with Chick, the more I get to know, the more I kind of go crazy for what he’s doing and the more I have to learn from him. So, not only do I get to learn from him every night and get challenged incredibly, but now I’m becoming friends with one of my idols.”

Fleck and Corea make an awesome pair. Known individually for their genre-bending tendencies, the banjo picker and pianist weave duets out of virtuosity, creative yearning, and mutual admiration.

While the two first teamed in 1994 when Corea performed on several tracks of Fleck’s Tales from the Acoustic Planet, the 2007 release The Enchantment is the duo’s first full-length recorded effort. The album features four songs by Corea, six by Fleck, and a sublime cover of the standard “Brazil.” The collaboration is built on a bed of jazz, but elements of classical, bluegrass, and more are cunningly blended into the stew.

Fleck has collaborated with some of the finest musicians of our time, including Dobro (resonator guitar) player Jerry Douglas, violinist Mark O’Connor, pianist-singer Bruce Hornsby, and saxophonist Branford Marsalis. Sometimes he has written the music alongside the other artist and sometimes not. The project with Corea falls into the latter category.

“I guess Chick has not done a lot of co-writing and actually seems to have the sense that people write separately. It actually surprises me because I think he’d be a great co-writer. But I think he has a thing in his head that songs really emanate from one person and that a person should complete their own songs,” Fleck says.

“We did get together once before the recording for several hours two days in a row, actually at Edgar [Meyer]’s house. He’s got a real nice piano, a Steinway. Edgar was out of town. We went over there, I don’t know, maybe four hours altogether, and threw around some ideas, showed each other some stuff we had. It became obvious that it was going to work,” he recalls. “But that would have been a good time to just improvise, maybe pull some themes out of that and write some tunes together, but he didn’t seem to feel like that was what we should do, and I was very respectful of that. Maybe some other time we’ll try that, because I actually would be very curious to see what would happen with him. Take one of my tunes that’s not done and see how he finished it, for instance.”

As the title implies, the CD is an enchanting testament to two musicians, each at the top of his game, who enjoy making music together.

“The key to the project’s success lies not so much in the contrast of disparate techniques and styles,” writes a critic for the BBC, “but in the crossroads where such things overlap: more specifically, where the players not only meet but gleefully transcend our expectations, which they often do here.”

Corea and Fleck recorded The Enchantment in Los Angeles.

“We met the night before in the hotel room for a couple of hours, maybe, if that. And the next day we were recording. We were laying down ‘Brazil’ first thing the next day,” Fleck remembers. “The whole project we had a week to do it, but when I got there Chick said, ‘You know, I think we can record it and mix it in a week,’ which is like a shock to me, because I’m the kind of person who spends three months on a record if I can. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be like my Drive album,’ which we did in four days. It sure was—that’s what we did.”

It’s clear that Fleck is in awe of Corea’s ability to create music of such quality in a way that seems so effortless.

“We took these tunes we had barely played at all and knocked them into professional level in a matter of an hour or two per song—and then started laying down takes,” Fleck says. “He’s such a fine player that generally everything he plays is useable on a record, where a lot of us, myself included, don’t feel that way about our playing. I play and go, ‘That’s not good enough.’ And finally I get to where it’s good enough. But by playing with him, I felt like I had to jump to that level sort of instantly. It’s one of those cases where I wouldn’t have chosen to do the record that way, but now that we did it, I’m really proud of it. Not just because we did it fast, but because it really sounds good.”

The Massachusetts-born Corea, one of the most prolific composers of the last four decades, has written and performed a little bit of everything. He has worked in almost every corner of jazz from bebop to fusion to avant-garde. He’s also delved into classical and other genres.

Corea’s first significant professional job was with Cab Calloway. He has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Sarah Vaughan, and other giants. In 1968 Corea succeeded Herbie Hancock as the pianist in Miles Davis’ band, where he recorded landmark discs such as Bitches Brew and Live at the Fillmore East. His restless spirit and commitment to excellence have led Corea to create material for many projects, including his Electric Band and flamenco-flavored Touchstone group.

Before their current American tour in support of The Enchantment, Corea and Fleck spent late 2007 touring European counties, including Spain, Italy, Russia, Croatia, Latvia, Turkey, and England.

The reaction to the Corea/Fleck duo, whether from European or American audiences, is quite different than what the banjoist is used to in concerts with The Flecktones.

“What happens, when we play together, it sort of starts to weave a spell. And I think people get hypnotized by it, because there’s an intensity in our interaction, but it’s very subtle,” Fleck explains. “We’re both completely focused on each other the whole time. So like with The Flecktones there’s lots of response from the crowd for a hot solo or this and that.”

But when he plays with Corea, Fleck continues, “generally people are silent. Not because they’re shy but because they don’t want to miss what’s going to happen next. So if somebody does something great, they don’t burst out in loud applause. They just look at each other for a second, which is neat. It’s a different energy than I’ve ever performed with.”

Fleck says his duo work with Meyer approaches that level of intense yet quiet appreciation from listeners.

“There’s a focus to that, it’s almost like you get rated higher because everybody knows it’s hard,” he says. “Everyone’s listening in a different way, and they know how hard it must be to make a whole musical statement with just two people. It’s a lot of pressure, in a certain way.”

Fleck, who was born and raised in New York City, is often credited with reinventing the image and sound of the banjo through his solo work and collaborations with musicians of many stripes.

The banjo picker spent most of the 1980s with the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, which featured Sam Bush on mandolin, fiddle, and vocals. During that time he also recorded a series of solo albums for Rounder Records. The Flecktones band, which mixes bluegrass and jazz, has recorded and performed for almost two decades. Well known for its exhausting touring, the group has played for more than 500,000 audience members each year since 2001.

Performing with such a mix of musicians has brought eclectic recognition to Fleck. He has been nominated for Grammy Awards in more categories than any other musician.

“I think I’m up to ten [categories] now, so it’s awesome,” he says. “It’s amazing, actually, and the diversity of it is the part that’s fun for me, because I’ve been nominated in so many different categories. That’s kind of fun.”

He’s performing this year with Tony Trischka, one of his mentors who also performed as part of the April 2006 Banjo Summit at Penn State. He just got back from India, where he, Meyer, and Zakir Hussain, who was at Eisenhower in October with the Global Drum Project, were preparing for a new collaboration. He’s also part of The Sparrow Quartet—along with Abigail Washburn (a surprise guest at the Banjo Summit concert), Casey Driessen, and Ben Sollee—which is soon to release an album. Oh, and a film he’s been working on for a couple of years about his musical expeditions in Africa is expected to premiere at a festival this year, too.

Fleck thrives on the challenges and sense of renewal that come from performing with musicians from different backgrounds.

“I must be one of those people with a short attention span. It’s not that I have trouble focusing on something that I’ve been doing for awhile, it’s just that I go to another level when I’m confronted with something that I have to rise to. I realize that more and more, over the last few years as I’ve been doing some different kinds of projects, and when I’m playing with Chick, for instance, I’ve been able to reach some peaks that I don’t think I’ve ever reached before, simply because he’s challenging me so much,” Fleck says.

“I like playing with people for a long time, too. I love what happens with that, too,” he continues. “But one of the cool ways to keep that from becoming—I hate to say a rut because it doesn’t quite get to that point—but to keep it from just feeling the same and losing that focus, is by coming back to it from somewhere else. So if you can go do something fun and come back to something you’ve been doing, all of a sudden it’s new.”

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring Fleck, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before each performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.