If 
you had told me back in the fusion-dominated 70s, while I was sitting on my couch listening to my Return to Forever and Stanley Clarke School Days albums, that in two score years these same guys would be putting out the best ACOUSTIC music around, I’d have that you’d lost your mind. But, just as they so confidently predicted a global cooling back then, God shows that He gets the last word in our prognostications, so we’ve got 70s icons Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Hubie Laws (along with drummer Marcus Gilmore) filling the hip Catalina with some of the tastiest unplugged sounds your cochlea will ever encounter.
LA icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set up the festive mood (who would have made THAT prediction in the 70s?) with emcee-ing and introducing the trio, whereby Corea’s piano ruminations lead into a gliding and flowing take of “Eiderdown” that featured simpatico interplay between all three compatriots. Clarke’s own “Three Wrong Notes” had the three right gents delivering some of the most deliciously joyful bebop runs this side of Bud Powell, with Clarke’s sumptuous bass snapping and popping like UPS bubble wrap.
Flute meister Hubie Laws ambled on stage for the rest of the 1 ½ hour set and floated over Corea’s chords and Gilmore’s shifting sands of cymbals on the modal “Summer Song” before Corea changed into standard mode with a beta wave take of “Darn that Dream.” The serenade ramped up a few degrees as Clarke’s fingers performed a flamenco dance on “La Fiesta” which included Gilmore and Corea going back and forth like a Toreador. Closing the evening was Corea’s wife Gayle Moran contributing her vocals to an expressively exciting take of “500 Miles High” completing an evening that featured no musical or electrical gimmicks, no attitude or navel gazing contemplation; just a celebration of this incredibly creative music we call jazz which, like the church, has survived all attacks and predictions of its demise. A rare and enjoyable bird, indeed.
www.catalinajazzclub.com