Power of three

Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, the power of three, gave a powerful performance on the closing night of the Skopje Jazz Festival culminating in a standing ovation from the audience. Skopje, Macedonia, 26/10/2009.

Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, the power of three had a powerful performance at closing night of the Skopje Jazz Festival. Standing ovation from the audience made the power of three to come back at the stage twice

Miles Davis’ electric bands in the late 1960s served as the incubator for several pioneering jazz fusion bands, including Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter’s Weather Report and Chick Corea’s legendary Return to Forever. After Corea left Miles’ employ, he helped found the avant-garde acoustic quartet Circle with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. But Corea sought a band with new, less-esoteric direction where he could express his music to larger audiences. Return to Forever was that unit and for the brief five years they commanded the fusion universe, expanding the language from funk-fueled electric rock-jazz, to the acoustic quietudes of Corea's more classically-inspired pieces. After their successful reunion tour last year, the harmonic convergence that Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White felt has led to the formation of the jazz supergroup, Power of three. Corea, Clarke & White are musical masters sending audiences on sonic explorations of wondrous proportions. A journey of electro-acoustic alchemy—from straight ahead swinging jazz to hard-hitting fusion. Surprisingly enough, after 40 years of brilliant career, the years of 2008 was probably the busiest and most successful for Chick Corea, Return to Forever, another supergroup – Five piece band (with John McLaughlin), return to Crystal Silence with Gary Burton… What led to a new Grammy award for Chick and top positions in the polls of the leading music magazines (JazzTimes, Swing Journal and Downbeat) – Artist of the year, best piano player, best electric keyboardist!