When Steve Khan decides to cover an existing song or composition, his version tends to add a layer that I would describe as the earth’s frequency one can’t hear, but only feel when listening. Can recommend reading the entire tribute on Steve’s website, while listening to his very own Chick Corea tribute he imagined, realized and then recorded with some of his esteemed friends and colleagues in the wide jazz and music realm.
“I wanted to express something about just what Chick Corea had meant to me, but with thousands of tributes being written and spoken about him, and by those who had been musically and personally so very close to him, what could I possibly add to that? Well, it took a few days, but I finally decided to write something personal about how I experienced Chick’s playing and composing for the TRIBUTES page at my website. When great musicians have passed away and I have written about them, usually I make a little collage of album covers, the ones that meant the most to me. Often I can narrow that down to 3 – sometimes as many as 5. But in Chick’s case, when I got to 5, I felt that this was just not enough, and so, I put together another 5 – it’s the first and only time that I have done something like that. And in writing the tribute, I still mentioned a few other albums. Amongst those ‘extra’ albums was Joe Farrell’s CTI album from 1971, “OUTBACK” which featured Joe, Chick Corea, Buster Williams, Elvin Jones, and Airto Moreira. I always loved that album, though it seemed that, as the years passed, no one paid too much attention to it. One of the most significant parts of that album was Chick’s hauntingly Spanish-influenced tune “Bleeding Orchid” which seemed to escape everyone’s attention, and was out-of-view for the longest time. It was my recollection that Chick had never rerecorded that tune ever again. And so, I began to hear this piece of music in a different way – and, as the days passed, I felt like I was starting to hear an arrangement in my imagination, a way that I could personally interpret the piece, and in doing so, express my own great admiration for Chick, and everything that he had added to my own musical concepts – even the way that I came to approach the guitar.”