CHICK COREA & JOHN McLAUGHLIN SUPERGROUP “FIVE PEACE BAND”
FEATURING KENNY GARRETT/SAX, CHRISTIAN McBRIDE/BASS AND DRUMMER BRIAN BLADE

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2009, 8:00 PM
AT BASS CONCERT HALL
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

“The sound was familiar—that irresistible driving funk, capable of rising to ecstatic heights. Everything they played…was touched with the same magic.”
—The Daily Telegraph (London)

“The surprise is not that keyboardist Chick Corea and guitarist John McLaughlin have finally decided to form a band, but that it has taken so long. McLaughlin and Corea have known each other since the late 1960s and both played an important part in the birth of fusion as members of the band behind legendary trumpeter Miles Davis.”
—The Australian

After wowing crowds in Europe last fall and in Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia this winter, Chick Corea & John McLaughlin supergroup Five Peace Band begin their first U.S./North American tour , making a stop in Austin on Thursday, April 2 to play the University of Texas at Austin Performing Arts Center’s Bass Concert Hall. Five Peace Band features legendary co-leaders Chick Corea (piano, keyboards) and John McLaughlin (guitar) along with their all-star support team: Kenny Garrett on saxophone and bassist Christian McBride. Vinnie Colaiuta and Brian Blade will share the drum seat for the tour; Brian will perform at the Austin show.

The quintet’s tour de force double-album, Five Peace Band Live, which was recorded during their European tour last fall, will be released in summer 2009 by Concord Records, but the double-disc CD will be made available early at performance venues as well as the band’s website (www.fivepeaceband.com ) to coincide with the tour. Five Peace Band Live features Corea and McLaughlin’s inspired duets as well as all five members negotiating the twists and turns of the compositions.

As shown throughout the tours, Corea and McLaughlin are truly kindred spirits, given that both are brave musical explorers and virtuosos on their respective instruments. As young jazz artists, they both did stints with Miles Davis and appeared together on the groundbreaking jazz/rock/funk classic Bitches Brew before forming their own revolutionary bands: Corea’s Return to Forever and McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. The innovative music played by these two groups attracted theater and stadium-sized audiences in the ‘70s and helped to shape a new genre of music, turning on multitudes of rock fans to a new form of jazz.

Since those burgeoning jazz-fusion days, both Corea and McLaughlin have led extraordinarily prolific careers, with continual creative output spanning many genres of music in a host of different musical settings—all the while maintaining unparalleled artistic integrity and becoming legends in their own right.

Five Peace Band marks the duo’s first collaboration with a band, presenting eclectic nights of highly creative music that includes nods to Miles (and to the late Joe Zawinul, with an exhilarating performance of “In a Silent Way”), intricate acoustic jazz, burning jazz/rock/funk, and intimate duets. Also in the mix are Corea and McLaughlin classics.

“I thought this might be a good period for both of us, so I presented [John with] the idea of a quintet and the musicians involved,” Corea told Australia’s Perth Now. “He liked the idea right way. We decided pretty quickly that both of us would bring musical ideas and compositions. John sent me a bunch of stuff and I sent him my ideas. I wrote several new pieces. Within a couple of weeks we had the basic direction of what we would perform.”

Corea also told The Australian that the band’s aim was to create “a new, fresh sound,” and that the sets are “more electric than not, but there are acoustic moments. John is playing his electric guitar all the way through, but he has this really cool ability to be able to play that instrument in a pretty mellow way. So we do some duets where I play acoustic piano and he plays the electric guitar.”

McLaughlin told iheartguitar.blogspot.com that both he and Corea have a “mutual history, a combined history.” He added that even though the Five Peace Band is their first group outing together, they have performed together before: “What we’ve done over the years is played many times in duo together, piano and guitar. And this is something that we really love to do…[On the tour] we do it every night at some point, we’ll just get together, just the two of us on stage. It’s very special…We have a very strong complicity, in a way. It’s just such a joy with this band. They’re such great musicians and great human beings too.”

CALENDAR LISTING:

Thursday, April 2, 2009, 8:00 pm – The University of Texas at Austin Performing Arts Center presents Chick Corea & John McLaughlin Five Peace Band at the Performing Arts Center’s Bass Concert Hall (E. 23rd St. and Robert Dedman Dr). A map of the campus: http://www.utpac.org/visit/maps_directions . Tickets ($39.50 – $79.50) are on sale now at the authorized ticket outlets, which include the Bass Concert Hall Box Office, most H-E-B stores and all Texas Box Office outlets, online at www.utpac.org , or by calling (512) 477-6060 or (800) 982-BEVO.

Press Contact:
Gene Bartholomew
512.471.0632
gbartholomew@utpac.org

Download a PDF version of the Five Peace Band press release.