A Banjo Meets the Piano Keys
Corea's piano and Béla Fleck's banjo make an unexpectedly warm and playful pairing.
The Enchantment opens with the sound of two very different instruments finding a common language. Chick Corea's piano carries the harmonic weight and rhythmic drive, while Béla Fleck's banjo flickers around it, picking out melodies that sound both bright and slightly rustic. The mood is relaxed and conversational rather than austere, and the pairing works more often than one might expect from a piano and banjo duo.
The record is a 2007 release on the Concord label, made by two musicians who had each spent years crossing genre lines. Corea and Fleck lean into that openness, moving between jazz phrasing, folk-inflected melody, and a few passages where the two instruments simply trade ideas back and forth. Nothing here feels like a heavy statement. It is closer to two skilled players enjoying the challenge of making an odd combination sound natural.
For listeners new to either musician, this is a pleasant entry point rather than a definitive one. It is not Corea's most essential recording or Fleck's most adventurous, but it shows both of them in good humor and good form. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three stars out of four, which is a fair measure of a record that is engaging and well played without quite reaching the top tier of either artist's catalog.
Who's playing
Chick Coreapiano
Béla Fleckbanjo
