hough he's best known as a groundbreaking jazz artist, Chick Corea is also a stalwart fan of science fiction, reveling in the works of many of the great Golden Age authors. At the same time, he's a longtime acolyte of the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.
The 12-time Grammy Award-winning artist recently fused these related passions on To The Stars, an imaginative new album based upon Hubbard's well-regarded 1950 story of the same name. Working with his legendary Elektric Band, Corea fashioned a daring and diverse instrumental expedition that ingeniously builds upon the tale's intrinsic and, for its time, quite innovative ideas.
As the following discussion reveals, the 63-year-old musician's unique tone poem not only explores and elaborates on the adventure's colorful characters, but also allows the composer to share his own ideas about the book, science-fiction writers in general and the overall musical nature of the universe.
Rather than calling the CD a soundtrack or concept album, you describe it as a tone poem. Why is that?
Corea: A tone poem stands on its own as a piece of music. It doesn't accompany the text; it goes parallel to and expands upon the text, and if it comes after the text then hopefully it also helps the reader to enjoy the text. To me, the music should fuel one's imagination about the story, because one of the beautiful things about reading literature is that there is no sound. You're by yourself, you read at your own pace, and your imagination is free to run rampant. You can picture what you want to picture, and imagine what you want to imagine.
How do you go about turning pictures that were formed by words into images formed by music?
Corea: It's a process that's hard to describe. Basically, what I do, I think, is put myself into the character or the scene, and just create it as a full image, with sound and lights. Like you do when you read a book. Anyone does this to one degree or another. If the writer is really painting and coloring things, it invites you to create what he's describing. And then you add to it yourself, of course. One reader's mockup of what a vista might be will be different than that of a second reader. So that's what I do. I put myself into the story, and then add an emotion. When emotions start to be put into the character, that's when the music starts to come out. I haven't done it for a while, but what I used to do years ago when I did solo piano concerts was at one part of the show invite people up onto the stage and do a section called portraits. One at a time I'd sit them down in a chair next to the piano and look at them, then create a theme and some music. It's kind of like that.
What was it about To the Stars that inspired you to embark on this musical journey?
Corea: Right at the beginning of the first chapter, there's a point where Alan Corday, the main character, walks into a dive in New Chicago, and L. Ron Hubbard's description of what he sees and hears inspired me to write a piece of music. There's this figure sitting at the piano that's described in detail playing music that is also described very poetically.
For instance, one of Hubbard's phrases is that the music was "simple and yet complex." He also really goes into the description of what happens to the audience in the dive and the feeling of the music. Well, after reading it for about the tenth time I thought, "You know, I hear that music. I know what that guy's playing." So I went downstairs and, for fun, wrote a two-minute piece that I thought was what he might be playing. I felt it came out so good that I just kept doing that.
I found another character in the book, Mistress Luck, and wrote a portraiture of her. Then there was a planet in the book called Johnny's Landing, and I wrote a description of what happens when the spaceship circles around Johnny's Landing. It just kept rolling and rolling and rolling, and I decided that, if I could, I'd like to make it into a major project.
The character playing the piano, Commander Jocelyn, is an extremely intricate individual, and you have three separate works devoted to him. Can you tell me about the genesis of those particular pieces?
Corea: "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist" was the first piece I created. The next one I wrote was "Mistress Luck," which actually followed right from the end of "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist." Originally, I was going to open the record with "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist," and then it was going to go right into "Mistress Luck." ... However, after writing "Mistress Luck," I began a theme in the same key, and after I played two or three bars I thought, "That really sounds like Jocelyn, the hard-edged commander type." So that piece, the second one that I wrote for Jocelyn, became "Jocelyn—The Commander."
It wasn't until I wrote all the rest of the pieces that I thought about the fact that I also wanted to have the band play the "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist" theme. Now, I'd like to indicate that the music for the third piece, "Captain Jocelyn—Tribute by His Crew," is exactly the same, note for note, as "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist," which I know can be hard to realize because the orchestration is so amazingly different. "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist" is just the piano playing, whereas "Captain Jocelyn—Tribute by His Crew" is very orchestral. But it's the same notes! All I did was I took them and distributed them amongst the band, so it became the same theme played back to him by his crew, which was essentially a way to finish the recording. Actually, the way the recording finishes is "Captain Jocelyn—Tribute by His Crew," and then, at the very end, you hear Jocelyn playing the piano all by his lonesome.
So while "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist" was the first piece you wrote, it's the last tune on the CD? Why did you decide to place it at the end of the album?
Corea: It was a matter of what I felt would capture the attention of the audience. If I started the recording out with "Captain Jocelyn—The Pianist," people who didn't know anything about the Elektric Band would think, "Oh, this is a piano record." Well, it's anything but a piano record! So I thought, "No, I can't start the record that way. I have to open the record with something powerful by the band," and therefore we start with "Check Blast."
Earlier you mentioned Mistress Luck, who's really just a minor character in the tale, yet you have two compositions devoted to her. What intrigued you enough about her to create two discrete portraits?
Corea: Mistress Luck was one of the only warm pieces of human beauty in the story. She's a beautiful woman, and a very nice complement to all the hard-edged stuff going on with Alan Corday, Captain Jocelyn and the crew. Actually, in that first piece that I wrote for her, "Mistress Luck—A Portrait," the theme takes only 30 seconds to expose. I just developed that theme based on the idea that she was the one who probably was the "events in charge" on Jocelyn's ship, the Hound of Heaven. When Captain Jocelyn wanted to put on a party, she would probably whip it together. Plus, at the party that's in the book, she's the one working to get Corday down there and getting him drunk and trying to cool him down and so forth.
Still, the two tunes—particularly the second one, "Mistress Luck—The
Party"—seem to portray an exoticism within her that isn't in the book.
Corea: That could be, because she's presented in very different ways. At first she's seen as the sultry, beautiful lady who's just kind of standing there, but then at one point she's the party maker. You don't know if she's a little bit loose with Corday or what. Then, at the end, I won't tell your readers, but there's an incredible last scene that adds a whole other depth to her character. So she's not just a light, frivolous lady.
On the other hand, Alan Corday is the protagonist in the novel, and he has only a single composition based on his character.
Corea: Yeah, but what a composition!
Why did you decide to devote only one track to him?
Corea: To tell you the truth, I didn't plan it so that I metered out amounts of time to various things. What I did was I found themes that I felt fit the flow of the book, and then found the most appropriate location or character for it. Again, in the same way that "Mistress Luck—A Portrait" was a complement to the harder-edged stuff, Corday's piece also was a bit of a complement to the rest of the music in that it's a little romantic even though it's a fandango dance. Yet it has also got melodies in it that show a sensitive heart. All in all, I thought it portrayed Corday well enough to serve.
To tell you the truth, even though Corday was the protagonist, Jocelyn was really the guy that intrigued me. He has so many different edges. For instance, the way he handles Corday is very interesting. Jocelyn tries to get in communication with him, and really what he's looking for is a way out of the time trap. So he keeps asking Corday, "Are there any new time equations?" He's got a wider view, one that Corday never did pick up on until the end of the book. So to me Jocelyn is the deeper guy.
You even wrote a piece about the Hound of Heaven. How do you go about creating a theme for an inanimate object like a spaceship?
Corea: It wasn't just the Hound of Heaven, it was the Hound of Heaven and everyone on it: the crew and everyone on the vessel, who, as we're told, in the book became their own country. When I stood back from the ship and imagined it moving through the heavens, I didn't only see a piece of metal moving through the sky. I saw a country. I saw humanity, and all that humanity is about, moving through space.
Many of the works feature flamenco and Afro-Cuban rhythms, yet the book doesn't expressly cite any Latin influences. Why did you choose to infuse the work with so much Latin flavor?
Corea: I have my own ideas about the history of people throughout the universe, and one of my beliefs is that rhythms with deep Latin roots are rhythms that go way beyond planet Earth. I believe that if you went out into the stars you would literally find rhythms similar to those. For instance, the rhythm to "Johnny's Landing" is very heavily Afro, because I figured that Johnny's Landing was some planet out by a distant star. What would the rhythm for it be? It definitely wouldn't be a waltz; it would be something more dynamic. It's just my sense that these kinds of rhythms are rhythms of tribes and people and of humanity wherever they may live. Rather than just weird sounds: I don't believe that that's what's out there. I believe that if we connect out there, any place you hear weird sounds, they will come from weird artists. When you hear music out there, it's going to have rhythm.
Speaking of unusual sounds, how did you come up with the idea for the port views, the brief synthesizer breaks placed between each composition?
Corea: Well, my first idea was that since each piece was so energetic and so full of notes and information, the listener might need a little rest in between tracks. That was the concept that got me into it, and then I remembered there were several points in the book when Corday looks out the port and Hubbard describes the sparkling stars and the blackness and coldness of space. So I also got the idea that these interludes could act as a backdrop to the whole of the music, just as the blackness of space was a backdrop to the whole story. The port views are designed so that, after each particular piece, you take a look out the port window and see this vista, which calms you down. You can relax and take a deep breath before going on to the next chapter.
With all these separate themes, how did you ensure that the recording was cohesive as an overall listening experience?
Corea: The port views had a lot to do with helping to achieve that. The fact that the port views created a backdrop meant that I could put a portraiture of practically anything about the book on that backdrop and it could work. Still, I didn't have an actual plan. I didn't try and tell a story with the music because the story is already told. Like I said, the music is a tone poem to the story.
What do you hope people who aren't familiar with the book will get out of the music?
Corea: The text was and is the inspiration for the music. The text came first, and the text is source. Maybe what it will do is spark their imagination, and have them go back to the story with new viewpoints or a new way of looking at it or whatever. But hey, if they just listen to the music and enjoy it for what it is, that's OK, too.
For the past two years, you've performed at the annual Writers of the Future awards ceremony, which invariably includes in its audience well-known science fiction luminaries like Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle and Robert Silverberg. What's it like for you playing for the crème de la crème of the field?
Corea: The first year it was wild, because I knew they were a bunch of wild people who could be very much like musicians—they're writers, and science fiction writers at that! Guys that use their imaginations! So when I was asked to play a piano solo, I thought, "I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm just going to get out there and improvise." Which is precisely what I did, and it went over really well. This year, I knew my audience a little bit better, and I knew that they would very much like the sort of experimental, hard edge of the Elektric Band. It was a lot of fun.
Other than To The Stars and the stories of L. Ron Hubbard, what other science fiction works have influenced you?
Corea: Years ago, I remember very much enjoying 1984, which I still think is a masterpiece of visionary work, and I also thought Animal Farm was good. And I read Dune, which I liked a lot. So I've touched on it in the past, and actually now, through my involvement with Writers of the Future, I'm going to try to explore these fresh young writers. In fact, I've already cracked my new volume, the 20th edition. I couldn't keep my hands off it, and I thought the first story ["Monkey See, Monkey Deduce" by Jonathan Laden] was really swinging!
How does science fiction inspire you as a composer?
Corea: It's a common belief amongst those who like to stretch their imaginations or stretch their perceptions that we cannot be the only living beings in this universe. Science fiction asks, "OK, then what's happening?" Under the guise of the imagination, the writer invents scenarios and games and stories and machines and technologies and cultures. For instance, To the Stars goes through a number of cultures and explores how technologies change. ... However, even before there's a new technology, there has to be the idea for it, and science fiction writers are idea makers. They're the dreamers. Hubbard once said that a culture is as great as its dreams, and artists dream those dreams. So first comes the dream or the idea, and then after that comes the actual technology. To me, that's the excitement of science fiction. Yes, it's from the imagination, but wow, when well written it's very plausible stuff.
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Also in this issue:
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of Team America: World Police
and
Omar Naim and Jim Caviezel of The Final Cut
