Description
Chick Corea – Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 – 180 Gram Vinyl Recor
Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 is Chick Corea’s first unaccompanied piano album and an early cornerstone of the ECM catalog. Recorded in Oslo in April 1971 with producer Manfred Eicher and engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug, it catches Corea between the exploratory language of Circle and the more melodic direction that would soon lead toward Return to Forever.
The first side contains five named pieces. “Noon Song,” “Song for Sally,” and “Ballad for Anna” are lyrical and concise; “Song of the Wind” adds more rhythmic motion; and “Sometime Ago” develops a theme Corea would revisit in larger ensemble settings. The piano sound is clear, resonant, and close enough to preserve touch.
Side two is the suite “Where Are You Now?,” divided into eight pictures. These short improvisations move through different densities, registers, and gestures without requiring conventional song forms. Some are fleeting, others more developed, but together they show Corea testing how spontaneous ideas can acquire structure through contrast.
The album’s accessibility and abstraction are not opposites. Corea can state a singing melody, interrupt it with angular harmony, or let a rhythmic cell redirect the piece. The unaccompanied setting exposes those decisions while retaining the playfulness that remained central to his work.
This ECM Luminessence edition is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and presented in a gatefold sleeve with new contextual material. It preserves all thirteen sections of the original album.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
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