Romantic Warrior
Style-traversing jazz piano giant Chick Corea passed away on February 9.
“When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.” CHICK COREA
THE PRODIGIOUS output and artistic rigour of legendary jazz pianist, composer and fusion pioneer Chick Corea inspired and delighted audiences and fellow musicians alike for over 50 years. Blessed with a crisp, singing keyboard technique, Corea invested all his music – whether glittering post-bop improvisations, bombastic jazz-rock, lilting Latin jazz-pop or classical-influenced magnum opuses – with a breathtaking clarity of execution and aesthetic purpose. Yet, at the heart of his genius was humility. “I continue to be interested,” he once said. “I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.”
Born on June 12, 1941 to Italian parents and raised in Boston, Armando ‘Chick’ Corea received classical tuition from a family friend and initially aspired, thanks to his father’s jazz records, to play like Bud Powell and compose like Horace Silver. Relocating to New York, he dropped music studies at Columbia and Juilliard universities to pursue his freelance career, appearing with Blue Mitchell and Herbie Mann, among others. His dazzling work on Stan Getz’s Sweet Rain (1967) led to his magnificent first albums as leader – Tones For
Joan’s Bones (1968) and Now He Sings, Now He
Sobs (1968) – and an invitation in the late 1960s to replace Herbie Hancock in Miles Davis’s band. Here the pianist discovered the Fender Rhodes piano and for the rest of his career vacillated happily between electric keyboard and acoustic piano.
In 1971 he formed avant-garde combo Circle with Dave Holland and Anthony Braxton, but by 1972, after his Scientology convinced him to communicate more accessibly with an audience, he formed the sunny, melodic Latin-fusion group Return To Forever (featuring vocalist Flora Purim). Later 1970s RTF albums with a different line-up pursued a grandiloquent, increasingly synth-adorned Mahavishnu-style jazz–rock, which found a crossover audience while dividing contemporary critics.
The ensuing decades revealed a steady stream of Corea-led combos. His
Elektric Band with John
Patitucci and Dave Weckl updated RTF’s fusion approach in the 1980s and 1990s, Akoustic Band and New Trio (with Avishai Cohen and Jeff Ballard) were scintillating traditional piano trio settings, and Spanish Heart gave a home to Corea’s interest in flamenco. He began a life-long duo partnership with vibraphonist Gary Burton in 1972 and had substantial duet partnerships with banjoist Béla Fleck, vocalist Bobby McFerrin and pianists Herbie Hancock and Hiromi Uehara. He composed several jazz standards (Spain, 500 Miles High, La Fiesta, Windows), as well as a piano concerto and string quartet.
Winner of 23 Grammys, Corea was grateful (“Gee thanks, I’m humbled by it,” he said in 2019), but undistracted. “A competition is not part of the basic nature of an artist,” he said the same year. “Now, I just have to go out and write my next piece of music.”