Gerry Gibbs “Songs From My Father” is coming on 8/6, featuring Chick Corea’s final recorded performance

Jul 13, 2021

Gerry Gibbs publishes Songs from my father with unreleased music by Chick Corea

Songs from my father is the highly anticipated new album from music scholar Gerry Gibbs. It is his thirteenth release as frontman, drummer, percussionist and bandleader, as well as arranger, Gibbs presents a two-disc masterpiece featuring four versions of his acclaimed trio that goes by the name Trasher Dream Trio.

Under his clever leadership, the band of jazz titans pay heartfelt tribute to the musical legacy of Gerry’s father, Terry Gibbs, one of the last living architects of be bop and innovators of the percussion instrument: the vibraphone.

For this purpose Gerry selected no more and no less than 18 melodies from his father’s vast discography and interpreted the material in a timeless way through his own compositional prism and lens, with ingenious and modern arrangements. Also Songs from my father has the last performance recorded with the great Chick Corea, piano genius who also passed away a few dates ago. It also includes one of the melodies Chick composed specifically for this project.

With Gibbs on drums, he has had the chance to record on this album with his stellar trios. Here you can enjoy excellent musicians such as Korea himself, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams, Patrice Rushen, Larry Goldings, Geoff Keezer and Christian McBride.

A global pandemic could not stop this prolific jazz man, but rather, on the contrary, positively inspired him leaving an echo of an impressive season of creative production. Gibbs presents this album fresh from his epic 2019 work titled Our People, which defies the musical genre. Some critics defined it as “cleverly overlapping pieces that often come close to cinematic … quite a feat.”

We also had access to his previous 2020 Emotional Pandemic, an 18-track album entirely composed and performed by his own person. The 8 instruments. In fact, this was the launch that caught the attention of Chick Corea himself. Korea asked the drummer the process for recording all the instruments. That minimal conversation evolved into the possibility of collaboration and the concept was born: it was possible to release a double album as a result of collaborations with four amazing triso, including the aforementioned collaboration with Chick and Ron Carter.

In this state of affairs, later Korea asked to become even more deeply involved in work, in music. He composed an original piece under the title Tango For Terry, dedicated especially to Terry Gibbs and even arranging two pieces for the album.

Gibbs comments “What he wanted to do seemed almost impossible with the covid. There was a lot of fear, travel, safety precautions and logistics. How do 4 trios coordinate when a disease spreads all over the world and in the USA? That was the challenge and yet Gibbs saw the opportunity and did not give up organizing several trips to capture the sounds. Without a doubt, he has been worth it.

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