Chick Corea, with a Spanish accent.

Byline: Carolyn Lamberson The Register-Guard

Last year, the Shedd Institute brought Herbie Hancock, one of the world's leading jazz pianists and composers, to Eugene for a night of music.

In 2006, the folks at the Shedd are at it again. This year's legendary jazz pianist and composer?

Twelve-time Grammy winner Chick Corea, who just last month was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as a Jazz Master, along with Tony Bennett and Freddy Hubbard. The title is the nation's highest honor for jazz musi- cians.

Corea will perform two shows at the Shedd on Saturday with his latest band, the Spanish-flavored Touchstone. He and the band are on tour in support of Corea's latest album, "Ultimate Adventure."

The tour will take Corea from Anchorage to Richmond, Va., and many places in between.

`I love doing tours like this. A lot of the gigs I do always end me up in big cities: L.A., New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, so forth," he said by phone from, incidentally, London. "They're always great to do, but I love playing smaller towns, places where people don't get as many shows.

`You get some local enthusiasm and find out what people are thinking in the middle of the country.'

Touchstone features a number of Spanish musicians - percussionist Rubem Dantas, saxophonist-flutist Jorge Pardo and bassist Carles Benavent - who are also longtime Corea collaborators. The group got together in 2004 for a tour of Europe that resulted in the two-disc "Rhumba Flamenco: Live in Europe."

`I had put a repertoire to- gether of some of my earlier music that had Latin flavors to it,' Corea said, `and put it in the hands of these Spanish musicians, who then turned the phrase the way they do.'

Joining Touchstone on this tour is Auxi Fernandez, a Spanish flamenco dancer who first performed with the group during a show last fall in Barcelona, Spain.

She comes on stage during the second half of the concert and will perform during a couple of pieces.

While Corea has worked with dancers on special projects in the past, this is the first time he's incorporated a dance element into his show.

`If you know anything about flamenco dancing, you know it's not really choreographed,' Corea said. "It's very much improvised, which is how it tends to fit with the spirit of the music.'

Lest anyone think they're in for a night full of flamenco, Corea is quick to correct that view.

`It's not flamenco music. It's my music,' he said. "But it is played by these great musicians who have a background in flamenco. So their interpretation is very much that way, and I lean the music that way.

`And now, with dancer and so forth, it makes for something unusual.'

Corea is a musician who has been expanding boundaries for almost 40 years.

The "has played with" section of his biography is impressive. The list includes Hancock, Dave Holland, Sarah Vaughn, Stanley Clarke, Michael Brecker, Bobby McFerrin and many others.

As the allmusic.com Web site points out, Corea signed on with Miles Davis as Hancock's replacement. He was on board for the acclaimed "Bitches Brew" recording, in addition to "In a Silent Way" and "Miles Davis at the Fillmore."

Corea's never been one to pick a genre and stay with it for decades. As the editors of `The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD" note, "Corea has created a body of music that has embraced Latin funk, a strong (Bela) Bartok influence, free jazz, extended rock and, more recently, classical forms.

`A consummately expressive player with a complex intellectual stance, he has not been afraid to flirt with banality, a sure sign of creative great- ness."

The Spanish/Middle Eastern essence of "Ultimate Adventure" comes in part from the skills and backgrounds of the Touchstone musicians, and in part from a literary source.

Corea, a Scientologist since 1968, in 2004 recorded "To the Stars," a tone poem based on the L. Ron Hubbard science-fiction novel of the same name. Shortly after he started Touchstone, Corea decided he wanted to do another Hubbard-inspired tone poem.

`Hubbard wrote in a lot of different genres in the '30s and '40s - detective, action, all kinds of genres - but science fiction and fantasy are my favorites," he said.

"The thing that jumped out at me was the title. I just loved the title. I reviewed it and read it again, it turned out to be spot-on food for the band.'

The story has a backdrop of Arabia. In fact, a copy of "The Arabian Nights" has a role in the plot, which centers on the hero getting transported to another plane while looking at a page from the book.

The shows in Eugene will feature a lot of music from "Ultimate Adventure," Corea said.

And as fans of an artist as accomplished as Corea have some to expect, much of the night will be improvised.

`The themes and the flavors definitely come from the composition of `Ultimate Adventure,' ' he said. `But the band definitely opens up the material. It's a part of our language.'

Reach Carolyn Lamberson at 338-2341 or clamberson@ guardnet.com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Chick Corea and Touchstone

When: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday

Where: Jaqua Concert Hall, the Shedd, 285 E. Broadway

How much: Tickets for each show are $44, $36 or $32; tickets to both shows may be purchased at a 15 percent discount; tickets available through the Shedd, 434-7000, [phone], or at 868 High St.

CAPTION(S):

Chick Corea (second from left) and Touchstone: (from left) Tom Brechtlein, Carles Benavent, Jorge Pardo and Rubem Dantas. Flamenco dancer Auxi Fernandez will join the band on stage.