Chick Corea and Gary Burton - In Concert, Zürich, October 28, 1979 (1980 Japanese ECM 2xLP)

Chick Corea and Gary Burton - In Concert, Zürich, October 28, 1979 | 2xLP - 1980 Japanese ECM / Trio Records (PA-6125~26, Trio-Kenwood Corporation)

• The first live album from one of jazz’s defining duos, recorded at the Limmathaus in Zürich during their 1979 European tour, seven years after Crystal Silence established the piano and vibraphone pairing as a format in its own right
• Ten pieces across four sides, including a near-twelve-minute live “Crystal Silence”, extended solo features for both musicians, and three Steve Swallow compositions that Burton brought from his own working repertoire
• Japanese pressing on Trio Records, manufactured by Trio-Kenwood Corporation with lacquers cut by Victor Company of Japan, produced by Manfred Eicher for ECM

Chick Corea and Gary Burton first played together by accident at a Munich festival in 1972, ending up as the only two musicians at a late-night jam session. Manfred Eicher heard them and booked a studio date. The album that came from it, Crystal Silence, was recorded in a single day in Oslo and became one of ECM’s landmark releases. By the time of this Zürich concert in October 1979, the duo had added a second studio album (Duet, also 1979) and toured extensively in Europe, and their interplay had deepened accordingly. “Crystal Silence” itself appears here in a spacious eleven-minute reading that breathes differently from the studio original, and “Señor Mouse” opens the set with a rhythmic directness that announces two musicians who know exactly where the other is heading. Corea wrote seven of the ten pieces. The three Steve Swallow compositions, including the medley “I’m Your Pal / Hullo, Bolinas” (a Burton solo feature) and the closing “Endless Trouble, Endless Pleasure”, reflect Burton’s long partnership with the bassist and the way Swallow’s writing sits naturally alongside Corea’s.

The programme gives each musician room to stretch alone. Burton takes the Swallow medley as an unaccompanied solo on side three, and Corea follows with “Love Castle” at over fourteen minutes, originally an electric piece from My Spanish Heart but reworked here as a solo piano tour de force. These moments sit alongside tight duo work on “Mirror, Mirror” and “Song to Gayle” that demonstrates how the pairing worked: Corea’s piano and Burton’s vibraphone share enough tonal ground to blend but enough difference to remain distinct, and both musicians improvise with the kind of fluency that only comes from genuine mutual trust. The concert was recorded by Martin Wieland and engineered at Tonstudio Bauer. This is the 1980 Japanese pressing on ECM / Trio Records, a 2xLP set manufactured by Trio-Kenwood Corporation. Catalogue numbers PA-6125 and PA-6126 (original ECM catalogue: ECM 1182/83).