ROMANTIC WARRIOR

One of the best releases of RTF, with a formation I like the most : Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and Al Di Meola. This is the sixth album of RTF (and 3rd and last of this band formation), released in 1976. All of the 6 tracks are instrumental, three of them were written by Chick Corea, and the rest were by each of other band members.

'Medieval Overture' : what a glorious opening! Unique whistling sound from Chick Corea keyboards accompanied by fast pace drums and bass.

'Sorceress': written by Lenny White. Again I love a composition with good theme. The intro is quite memorable, and set the funky mood of the song that gets along with rock flavor of Al Di Meola guitar.

'The Romantic Warrior' : this title track is surprisingly a bit calmer, with a lot of guitar, bass and drum works. Al Di Meola solo is very nice, with his signature fast paced muted notes.

'Majestic Dance': hearing the first 10 seconds of the track, one can guess that this is Al Di Meola composition. There are many of his signatures in this nice track. Among all tracks, this is probably the easiest composition to listen, without any less intensity of their musicianship.

'The Magician': My favourite track of this album. Written by Stanley Clarke, this composition has a nice theme and several mood changes: nice and soft (01:30 ? a very heartwarming tune) to vivid and heavy tunes.

'Duel off the Jester and the Tyrant': longest track (more than 11 minutes), with a lot of solos and improvisations. This album is very impressive, the composition is solid and well structured. The solos and improvisations are in a good length to be enjoyed without getting lost and naturally show the virtuosity of each of the band members.

What I appreciate is that each of the compositions, whoever in the band wrote, is really take into account the equal contribution of each member and that makes the incredible strength of this album.