Chick Corea + Gary Burton Concert

Last saturday, I attended my very 1st (and hopefully not the last!) concert in Perth!! I watched Chick Corea + Gary Burton + WASO (West Australian Symphony Orchestra) play at the Perth Concert Hall.

The Perth Concert Hall is much smaller than The Esplanade. It's more than the Victoria Concert Hall.

I got the BEST seat ever! My friend and I booked for A Reserve tickets quite late (Normal price is AUD89 I think, but student concession is only AUD40) so, at first, we got seats in row 'X' - the last row of A Reserve. But then my friend was very clever; she went to ask the ticket lady if there were better seats - and there WERE! Woohoo! We got SECOND ROW tickets!! Whoohoo! Not bad for such a last minute booking, eh? Cause, as I've already mentioned, we booked late, so obviously we couldn't have got the seats in the middle aisle of the 2nd row. WE GOT BETTER SEATS! We got the left aisle, which means that we got to see Chick Corea's hands and fingers (and the outline of the music scores) up close! We could really see him tinkling the ivories! It was a Steinway, by the way. Cool, eh?

Copied this right out of the programme sheet:

Chick Corea & Gary Burton, pioneers of jazz-rock, have played together since 1972 and first recorded together in 1978 resulting in the album Crystal Silence. Their long term partnership has produced 2 Grammy-winning albums - Native Sense & Like Minds.

CHICK COREA
After accompanying Sarah Vaughan in 1967 and joining Miles Davis' band in 1968, Corea became one of the key figures in the 70s jazz fusion movement with Herbie Hancock and others. Recent years have seen Corea's increasing interest in contemporary music.

GARY BURTON
Gary Burton taught himself to play the vibraphone. Since 1971 he has worked as a teacher of percussion & improvisation at Berklee College of Music and in 1985 was named Dean of Curriculum. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate of music from the college, and in 1996 was appointed Executive Vice President.


Tonight's concert features duets based on both artists' history of over 3 decades of performance together. This is a cleebration of the 35th Anniversary of the first collaboration from which several of the pieces are premiered with orchestra.


KEVIN FIELD, CONDUCTOR
He is the Associate Conductor with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.


IT WAS GREAT!

The 1st section of the concert was just Chick Corea + Gary Burton duet. It was so interesting! I never knew you could do so much with a percussion instrument! Gary Burton was just doing crazy stuff with the vibraphone and his 2 mallets on each hand!

The 2nd section was with the orchestra. It was surprising - in a good way. The orchestra played like a soundtrack with the strings swelling, at time. This was punctuated by the improvised solos from the piano and the vibraphone. This I term, classical-jazz. This music was neither fully classical nor jazz. Perhaps, it was neo-classical! HAHA. NOT in the Prokofiev-Classical Symphony sense. If there was any sort of form at all, it was probably classical but fused with jazz rhythms and harmonies and all. All in all it was interesting.

Michael Batterby's came to Zion Church to preach and he also did a medley of jazzed-up versions of old hymns.

So, I had a snazzy, jazzy weekend! As a result, Esther and I went HIGH in church! wahaha!

It could have been even more jazzy if I had attended the Herbie Hancock concert on Monday. But I didn't because the CHEAPEST tickets were AUD99! So expensive! Furthermore, these were restricted viewing seats, i.e. you can only see certain parts of the stage. But my friend went for it and she said it was FANTASTIC! It was more jazz-rock, she said. Herbie Hancock and his band even played a version of his and John Mayer's collabration, "Stitched Up", with his bassist singing JM's part!