Native Sense: The New Duets

AMG Review of Native Sense: The New Duets

Richard S. Ginell
All Music Guide

The Chick Corea/Gary Burton series resumed in the late '90s after a long hiatus with this beautiful CD of acoustic duets on piano, vibes and occasionally marimba. The collaborations on Native Sense: The New Duets sound remarkably fresh and spontaneous, with an inevitable sense of sweep and flow like a river rushing through rapidly changing terrain. Corea contributes the lion's share of compositions here; most are uniformly strong pieces of work. Some, like "No Mystery" and the Spanish-tinged "Love Castle," are from the past; others, like the title track, with its attractively revolving ostinato base, the brooding "Post Script," and "Rhumbata," were composed for the sessions. The exceptions to the Corea monopoly are Béla Bartók's Bagatelle No. 6, which serves as a prelude for Corea's brooding "Post Script," Bartók's exuberantly dissonant Bagatelle No. 2, and a madly rippling rendition of Thelonious Monk's "Four in One" as the sole op-style workout of the session. This is the product of two mature masters in their mid-fifties from the jazz-rock era who know precisely what they want from their instruments and reject stylistic boundaries.