Recording live at New York's Blue Note club, Chick Corea unveiled another new group, the challenging Origin acoustic sextet, on this CD, winnowing down some 12 sets into an hour-plus package. With Steve Davis (trombone), and Bob Sheppard and Steve Wilson (flutes and reeds) up front, Corea had a flexible horn choir to write for, and he uses mellow, urbane voicings that recall some of the Herbie Hancock Sextet's early work in the late-'60s. The interplay between Avishai Cohen (bass), Adam Cruz (drums), Corea and the horns, though, is anything but mellow, and frequently they strike combative sparks against each other. Some of the selections, including "Double Image" (no relation to Joe Zawinul's electric jazz classic) and "Dreamless," have Latin-ish grooves which are no strangers to Corea's Spanish heart in spots. Often Corea's compositions are fairly uneven the allegedly Ellington-inspired convolutions of "Molecules'" especially try the patience yet everything here testifies to Corea's still-restless, creatively vigorous nature at age 56. For some unknown reason, the Japanese version of the disc is said to contain an extra track, "Sifu," recorded in Chick's home with just the piano trio. Richard S. Ginell (AMG)