Béla Fleck & Chick Corea’s Final Duo Album Set For Release

A final Béla Fleck and Chick Corea album, Remembrance, is due out on May 10 via Thirty Tigers. The posthumous album for Corea, who sadly died in 2021, is fittingly previewed with “Remembrance,” one of the last pieces of music the legendary jazz keyboardist recorded.

“I know it sounds unlikely. But it really happened. Once upon a time, I played banjo in a duo with Chick Corea,” Béla said of his collaboration with Chick. The two masterful musicians released their first full-length album together, 2007 Latin Grammy-winning LP The Enchantment, adding more hardware to their weighty trophy cases.

The duo went on to release a live album, Two, in 2015 and embarked on their final tour together in 2019, material from which appears on Remembrance. Produced by Fleck, the record also features “three previously unreleased Corea compositions as well as five short free improvisations, or impromptus, that Fleck has infused with written music,” as per a press release.

Those unreleased Corea compositions include “Enut Nital” and “Continuance,” the latter an older work that the duo unearthed for their live concerts. Among Béla’s contributions are Remembrance opener, “The Otter Creek Incident,” and “Juno,” a tribute to his son. There are also interpretations of towering jazz pianist Thelonius Monk and 18th Century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti.

“We pushed this duo to a new place before we ran out of time,” Fleck said. “We have here another cool look at Chick Corea, at the different ways that he can play that we wouldn’t have had. There’s a lot of great Chick Corea out there, and this is different.”

“With Béla, our duet has become so simpatico, and comfortable–comfortable spiritually.” Corea said in 2015. “And not meaning that we’re not adventuring musically, but I know that whatever we’re going to do is going to be musical.”

“It was one of the special relationships in my life,” Fleck added. “He was just so kind to me, and so helpful, and I learned so much from him.”

Remembrance is previewed with the title track. “It’s just one of those perfect Chick Corea tunes,” Fleck said of “Remembrance.” “It sounds to me like a New Orleans funeral march, even though it has a Latin component, like everything he did tended to.”

Listen to “Remembrance” below: