Children's Songs (Chick Corea album) explained

Children's Songs
Type:	Studio album
Artist:	Chick Corea
Cover:	Chick_Corea_Children's_Songs.jpg
Released:	April 1984^[1]
Recorded:	July 1983
Genre:	Jazz, classical
Length:	37:41
Label:	ECM 1267
Producer:	Manfred Eicher
Prev Title:	The Meeting
Prev Year:	1983
Next Title:	Voyage
Next Year:	1985

Children's Songs is an album by jazz pianist Chick Corea recorded in July 1983 and released on ECM the following year. The trio features violinist Ida Kavafian and cellist Fred Sherry.

Background and composition

Children's Songs mainly consists of short songs with simple themes. There is little development in the pieces, which capture a variety of melodies and moods. Corea began writing the first song in 1971.

In the preface of the annotated version Corea stated that he aimed "to convey simplicity as beauty, as represented in the Spirit of a child".

There are stylistic and structural parallels to the cycle Mikrokosmos, by Béla Bartók, including:

• use of the pentatonic scales
• employment of unusual time signatures and cross-rhythms
• expressing a complex variety of atmosphere in a relatively short time
• increasing difficulty and complexity through the sequence

Track listing

1. "No.1"
2. "No.2"
3. "No.3"
4. "No.4"
5. "No.5"
6. "No.6"
7. "No.7"
8. "No.8"
9. "No.9"
10. "No.10"
11. "No.11"
12. "No.12"
13. "No.13"
14. "No.14"
15. "No.15"
16. "No.16 & 17"
17. "No.18"
18. "No.19"
19. "No.20"
20. "Addendum" - (for violin, cello and piano)

Personnel

• Chick Corea – piano
• Ida Kavafian – violin
• Fred Sherry – cello

Notes and References

1. Web site: Children's Songs . .