I must confess to taking the shrink-wrap off Chick Corea's The Ultimate Adventure with a degree of trepidation. Fortunately, most of it turned out to be unjustified.
But the reason I hesitated about buying wasn't primarily to do with price. I saw Corea with the Elektric Band last year at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium, performing To the Stars, and hadn't enjoyed the performance as much as I expected to.
To the Stars was a conceptual work based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and so is this. The former I found to be overblown and bombastic, and there seemed a likelihood that what this had to offer would be more of the same.
Extended conceptual works in jazz and rock fail more often than they succeed, and Corea's work often straddles both genres. I also have to confess to a complete inability, buoyed by a strong disinclination, to take L. Ron and Scientology seriously.
Long-time Scientologist Corea's view is understandably different, and we touched on the subject over the phone, about a year ago, during the course of an interview for the Post.