Chick Corea, The Ultimate Adventure

Tracks & Durations

Note: The information about this album is acquired from the publicly available resources and we are not responsible for their accuracy.

Review

Just as some books need to be edited for length, so do some albums inspired by works of literature. At least that's the case with The Ultimate Adventure, Chick Corea's second straight album project derived from a novel by his late Scientology mentor L. Ron Hubbard. Dubbed a tone poem by Corea, the nearly 75-minute work has some of his airiest, most cooly fluent music in some time. With its distinctive electric piano punctuation and contributions by flutist Hubert Laws and RTF percussionist Airto Moreira, the lyrical passages have echoes of his much-loved band of the seventies, Return to Forever. And the Spanish tinge for which he is known gravitates winningly south to Arabic North Africa. Ultimately, though, not all of the album's chapters are equally lively: the "Adventure" goes on a bit much for those who aren't using it as a soundtrack to the plot about a boy on a self-actualization quest, and even for some who are. But Corea has never negotiated the acoustic-electric (or, in his parlance, akoustic/elektric) divide as well as he does here and his ability to command a large cast including saxophonist Tim Garland and guitarist Frank Gambale is impressive. --Lloyd SachsInspiration
After the fulfilling experience of writing and recording my last CD, To the Stars, inspired by a classic science fiction novel from my favorite author, L. Ron Hubbard, I began looking for another one of his stories--one that I could portray using my love for Spanish and African music and the talents of the musicians in my new band, Touchstone. Browsing through my collection, I was drawn to the title The Ultimate Adventure. Remembering that this unique fantasy story had a backdrop of scenes and characters from the ancient tales, The Arabian Nights, it immediately had me conjuring emotions, sounds, rhythms and music. Technically, I decided that my palette would be lots of rhythm, flute and, of course, keyboards. I also took this project as an opportunity to make music with some of my old friends who were so important to my music-making in the '60s and '70s--namely, Steve Gadd, Airto Moreira and Hubert Laws. And together with my more recent musical partnerships with Vinnie Colaiuta, Hossam Ramzy, Frank Gambale and Tim Garland, and finally the members of my current band, Tom Brechtlein, Jorge Pardo, Rubem Dantas and Carles Benavent--I was definitely inspired by these great artists in the creation of this music.

Tone Poem
As defined in my computer's dictionary: a "tone poem" is "an extended piece of music that is based on a literary, artistic, or ideological theme, for example, a folk tale or landscape." This has become my favorite form of musical expression.

As were The Leprechaun, The Mad Hatter, My Spanish Heart, Musicmagic, Secret Agent, The Romantic Warrior, Time Warp, To the Stars, and many other albums I've made, The Ultimate Adventure is a tone poem based on the characters, places and events in the story.

Other Versions

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