Cheers to Chick Corea’s divine performance!

On August 28th, I was invited to a Chick Corea Trio concert at the Billboard Live in Osaka. Honestly, when he heard about this concert, I thought, "What? He's still alive!?" I think it was almost 40 years ago. Chick Corea was extremely popular as a JAZZ pianist at that time. And one day I remember going to a concert by Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke, a leading bassist. Forty years after that, I am still impressed by the appearance of Chick Corea playing the piano in front of me.

Music doesn't question your age. As we all know, the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger is still unabated! When he gets on the stage at70 year old, the momentum cannot be stopped. Eikichi Yazawa, one of Japan's leading rock singers, has continued to reign on stage for many years and finally overcame the 70-year-old hurdle. It may mean that Mick and Ei-chan have more chances to play an active role because the average life expectancy has increased by 10 or 20 years worldwide. With that in mind, I wasn't abandoning myself yet, and I thought, "The future is long!"

When I listened to Chick Corea's performance with such thoughts in mind, I was suddenly reminded of my old memories. In 1982, maybe 40 years ago, after graduating from university, I entered the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT), a guitar vocational school that just opened in Hollywood, and became the first Japanese student. I played the guitar for 8 hours a day every day. The school was fresh, but sometimes a well-known guitarist was invited as a lecturer. As a recording artist, Lee Ritenour, who was so popular at the time, and Joe Pass, a master of jazz guitarist, visited our class as a special lecturer, and I still remember the happiness that I was able to spend every day with anticipation and excitement of what would be the next surprise.

1982 was around the time when the heyday of classic rock and disco came to an end, and instead fusion and punk began to spread, and Western music entered a new era. At that time, my favorite was Eddie Van Halen-style hard rock, and I was just playing the guitar to make my debut in Hollywood in collaboration with the former drummer of a famous band called Cheap Trick. However, although my heart longed to play wonderful original riffs like Eddie, I remember that as a guitarist, I could hardly play a solo per Larry Carlton, and I just kept practicing Carlton. In the meantime, the band broke up, and even I, who attended GIT, gave up my dream of becoming a rock star and left Hollywood without being able to master even jazz guitar. Making dreams come true is hard. It's been 40 years since then....

In front of me, 10 meters away, Chick Corea is playing wonderfully again. Practice really does make perfect. His solo not only has him hitting the keys, but also pulling off the divine work of standing up and flicking the piano strings themselves with his fingers and stroking the sound along with the sound of the keyboard. Great performance! Is this really a new style of playing the piano?!! What makes it first-class is that he does it so casually. To be honest, I'm grateful for this moment having lived for 40 years since then, just by seeing a heroic Chick Corea, a leading jazz piano player, playing the piano. A toast to Chick Corea's concert, which made me realize how wonderful it is to be alive!!!