Track Listing

1. Return To Forever
2. Crystal Silence
3. What Game Shall We Play Today
4. Sometime Ago La Fiesta

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6576 in Music
• Released on: 1988-07-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
The soul of fusion lies not in a barrage of note clusters pushed through overdriven amplifiers, but in the arresting beauty of Return to Forever's lucid vision--music without boundaries. The stunningly virtuosic pianist Chick Corea had already come through an exploration of free jazz with Circle, a tutelage in the Miles Davis Academy of New Electric Music and a soul-search with "Piano Improvisations" when he arrived at perhaps his most brilliant conception yet. Corea and bassist Stanley Clarke fly through the proceedings, supporting Joe Farrell's flute and soprano sax playing that may have been the performance of his life. Flora Purim's vocals and Airto Moreira's drums and percussion contribute discretely to the music's serenity... --John Swenson

CD Description
What a breath of fresh air this must have been to the moribund jazz scene of 1972. Going electric was the order of the day, and pianist Chick Corea, late of gigs with Miles Davis,embraced Miles' reconstituting of jazz for this sterling recording, the seeds of which would grow into one of the premier jazz-rock outfits of the '70s.
With Corea's liquid electric piano lines leading the way, and augmented by atmospheric vocalist Flora Purim and husband Airto Moreira, bassist Stanley Clarke and horn/reeds player Joe Farrell, this quintet spun the elegiac webs of forward motion that lay at the core of RETURN TO FOREVER. The sumptuous title track is 12 minutes of spidery basslines, wordless chanting, floating piano clusters and light-as-air percussion. They close with the epic-length improv session "Sometime Ago--La Fiesta", where Corea works Airto's crisscrossing percussive patterns into amaze of carnivalesque keyboards and rippling bass, a fiery excursion into both the urban jungle and the lush Brazilian hinterland.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
This album has hardly left my CD player since I bought it - that was almost a month ago! This is a totally brilliant album that seems to have been quite overlooked. Corea's piano playing is sublime - he's got a very melodic style (rather like Keith Jarrett) and excellent improvisation skills. He reads the music and the other band members very well and the overall effect is of seamless playing by the the whole band. Having said that, Stan Clarke's bass is also excellent and the rest of the band really fits together.

I suppose this is classed as Jazz-rock but it's a million miles from say Bitch's Brew - far more structured and chilled out. Just buy it and make your own opinion up. Anyone with more than a passing interest in music of that style will appreciate it. I think it's great!

Not too good for all of us
With great expectations I got this album. I'd never heard or read a bad review of it, I knew the musicians who'd played on it and loved most of their work. This was supposed to be an album that one couldn't help but love or admire. But its failed to ever really excite me.
There are interesting moments on the album, such as the climatic points of "Return to Forever", but the music also has a sickly sweet character to it. While this album is supposed to be making waves, the sound often masks what the musicians are actually doing in terms of breaking new ground. This is particularly shown in the 'Playful' "What game shall we play today". Perhaps I'm more of a fan of the harsh sounds that other fusion bands create like in Weather Reports "Mysterious Traveller", but the sounds in this album seem very plain.
Technically the album holds much weight as is to be expected, the songs are well crafted and the music itself is by no means bad. But, be warned, the album was not what I expected and as a result I continue to be dissappointed.

I am disappointed
I am a classical music lover.

From view of the classical music fan, I think that present jazz is sluggish. I think I have a glimpse of the cause and reason for the depression of jazz music today through "Chick Corea - Return to Forever".

In the classical music field, Pierre Boulez appeared in Bayreuth in 1976, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" was conducted by him for five years, and Bayreuth was reformed. He practiced his insistence "The enemy of the classical music is a mannerism" and denied the past.

After that the classical music that was sluggish became interesting. The classical music comes to be familiar and now even a manga, of which heroine is a piano student at an academy of classical music, gets a hit in Japan (Nodame Cantabile). So it becomes easy to be familiar with the classical music to people who usually do not listen to music (in the 1970's, it was impossible.).

What has jazz done for these thirty years?

I am a John Coltrane's fan. I can find the meaning and value that he in fact denied jazz. However, the meaning and value cannot be found from "Return to Forever". After all I think that "Return to Forever" has neither broken the mannerism nor denied the past.

What is the difference of "Return to Forever" from the music that progressive rock band made in the 1970's? And what kind of progress (that can't be found in punk rock and new wave) can be found in listening to "Return to Forever"?

Percussions and CHICK COREA's electric piano find Santana.
JOE FARRELL's woodwinds remind King Crimson.
Lyrics make no sense.

01 Return to Forever beats like "Tarkus" of Emerson Lake & Palmer. FLORA PURIM shouts like YOKO ONO.
03 What Game Shall We Play Today is not at all other than pop music either.
04 Sometime Ago - La Fiesta STAN CLARK's wood bass solo has no power. He should learn Jimmy Garrison.