Chick Corea

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Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is an multiple-time Grammy Award winning American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer.

He is arguably best known for his work during the 1970s in the genre of jazz fusion, although his contributions to straight-ahead jazz have been tremendous. He participated in the birth of the electric fusion movement as a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, and in the 1970s formed Return to Forever.

He continued to pursue other collaborations and explore various musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among jazz pianists, Corea is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential since Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner (along with modern contemporaries Herbie Hancock, Ramsey Lewis and Keith Jarrett). His piano performance showed a similarity to Hancock; yet he maintained a distinctly individual voice. He is also known for promoting Scientology.

Life and career

Youth

Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, an urban suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. His father Armando, a jazz trumpet player who had led a Dixieland band in the Boston area in the 1930s and 1940s, introduced Chick to the piano around the age of five. Growing up surrounded by jazz music, he was influenced at an early age by bebop stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver and Lester Young. At eight Corea also took up drums, which would later give him the ability to handle the piano as a percussion instrument. His Boston area heritage can be heard in his introduction of "Nefertiti" on Circle - Paris Concert as a Wayne "Shahter" composition.

Schooling proving to be unsuccessful, Corea mostly developed his piano skills by exploring music on his own. A notable influence was concert pianist Salvatore Sullo for whom Corea started taking lectures at age eight, who introduced him to classical music, helping spark his interest in musical composition.

Given a black tuxedo by his father, he started doing gigs when in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroy's band at the time, and had a trio which would play Horace Silver's music at a local jazz club. He collaborated with Portuguese bandleader and trumpet player Phil Barboza, and with conga drummer Bill Fitch who introduced him to Latin music:

I liked the "extraversion" of Latin music, especially the dance and salsa style music - bands like Tito Puente's band and Machito's band. The Cuban dance music was a great kind of antidote to some of the more serious, heady jazz that I was into. I liked the "outgoingness" and exuberance of the music. I just stayed interested in all kinds of Latin music. Then I discovered Spanish Latin music, which is flamenco.

He eventually decided to move to New York where he took up musical education for one month at Columbia University and six months at The Juilliard School (among his Juilliard teachers was Peter Schickele, who described Chick as "the most awake student [he] ever taught"). He quit after finding both disappointing, but liked the atmosphere of New York whose musical scene became the starting point for his professional career.

Early career

Corea started his professional career in the '60s playing with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and Latin greats such as Herbie Mann, Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria. One of the earliest recordings of his playing is with Blue Mitchell's quintet on The Thing To Do. This album features his composition "Chick's Tune", a clever retooling of "You Stepped Out of a Dream" that demonstrates the angular melodies and Latin-and-swing rhythms that characterize, in part, Corea's personal style. (Incidentally, the same tune features a hellacious drum solo by a very young Al Foster.)

His first album as a leader was Tones For Joan's Bones in 1966, two years before the release of his legendary album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, with Roy Haynes on drums, and Miroslav Vitouš on bass.

Another early sideman appearance is with Stan Getz on 1967's Sweet Rain (Verve Records).

Avant garde period

From 1968 to 1971 Chick Corea had associations with avant garde players; and his solo style revealed a dissonant, avant garde, orientation. His avant garde playing can be heard on his solo works of the period, his solos in live recordings under the leadership of Miles Davis, his recordings with Circle, and his playing on Joe Farrell, "Song of the Wind", on the CTI label. In September 1968, Corea replaced Herbie Hancock in the piano chair in Miles Davis's band and appeared on landmark albums such as Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. In concert, Davis's rhythm section of Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette played in a novel style that combined elements of free jazz improvisation and rock music. With the Davis band, Corea experimented using electric instruments, mainly the Fender Rhodes electric piano. In live performance he often used ring modulation of the electric piano, producing overtones reminiscent of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Examples of avant garde performance on Miles Davis albums: and

Expressing a desire to play more freely just as Davis's music became increasingly funk-based, Holland and Corea left to form their own group, Circle, active in the period 1970-1971. This free jazz group featured multi-reed player Anthony Braxton, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul. This band was documented on Blue Note and ECM. Aside from soloing in an atonal style, Corea sometimes reached in the body of the piano and plucked the strings. In 1971 or 1972, dissatisfied by the abstraction of free improvisation and expressing a desire to reach out to a wider audience, Corea struck out on his own.

Jazz fusion

In the early 1970s, Corea took a profound stylistic turn from avant garde playing to a crossover jazz fusion style that incorporated latin jazz elements. In 1971, he founded Return to Forever. This band had a jazz fusion sound, that while relying on electronic instrumentation, drew more on Brazilian and Spanish-American musical styles than on rock music. On its first two records, Return to Forever had a bright sound dominated by Flora Purim's vocals, the Fender Rhodes electric piano, and Joe Farrell's flute and soprano saxophone. Airto Moreira played drums. Corea's compositions for this group often had a Brazilian tinge. In 1972, Corea played many of the early Return to Forever tunes in a group he put together for saxophonist Stan Getz; this group, with Stanley Clarke on bass and Tony Williams on drums, recorded the Columbia label album Captain Marvel under Getz's name.

In the next year, the band moved more in the direction of rock music influenced by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Only Clarke remained from the group's first lineup; Bill Connors played electric guitar and Lenny White played drums. No one replaced vocalist Purim. (Briefly, in 1977, Gayle Moran served as vocalist in the band.) In 1974 Al Di Meola joined the band, replacing Connors. In this second version of Return to Forever, Corea extended the use of synthesizers, particularly Moog synthesizers. However, a distinction should be made between Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever. Return to Forever made heavy use of orchestration and arrangement, and made special focus on electronic technology and instrumentalist pyrotechnics (flashy display of technique at the expense of artistic expression). These qualities alienated many jazz purists and detractors pointed to these trends as representing a commercial turn in jazz fusion. The group's final studio record was in 1977. Thereafter, Corea focused on solo projects.

Corea's composition "Spain" first appeared on the 1972 Return to Forever album Light as a Feather. This is probably his most popular piece, and it has been recorded by a variety of artists (notably Al Jarreau). There are also a variety of subsequent recordings by Corea himself in various contexts, including an arrangement for piano and symphony orchestra that appeared in 1999. Corea usually performs "Spain" with a prelude based on Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez (1940), which earlier received a jazz orchestration on Miles Davis' and Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain. In 1976 he issued My Spanish Heart which showed particular debt to Latin American music and featured vocalist Moran, and electronic violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. It is noteworthy for its lyricism and arrangements.

Duet collaboration with Gary Burton

In the 1970s, Corea started working occasionally with vibraphonist Gary Burton, with whom he recorded several duet albums on ECM, noteworthy among them, Crystal Silence, 1972.

Later work

His other bands include the Elektric Band, the Akoustic Band, and Origin.

The Akoustic Band released a self-titled album in 1989, and featured John Patitucci on bass and Dave Weckl on drums. All three members of the Akoustic Band are superlative technical musicians, and some listeners actually find the trio's immaculate sound to be too perfect, preferring Roy Haynes's rough-and-ready, reactive drumming to Weckl's clockwork precision. Nevertheless, the 1989 recording marks a turn back toward traditional jazz in Corea's career, and the bulk of his subsequent recordings have been acoustic ones.

In 1992, he started his own record label, Stretch Records.

In 2001, the Chick Corea New Trio, with Avishai Cohen and Jeff Ballard on bass and drums respectively, released the album Past, Present & Futures. Notably, the 11-song album includes only one standard composition (Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz"). The rest of the tunes are Corea originals, and the album shows the composer and pianist in an extremely fertile phase, full of energy. This trio, Chick's third major piano trio, has a more organic sound than the Akoustic Band, but sounds more "worldy" than the classic trio with Vitouš and Haynes, as both Ballard and Cohen have extensive experience with music from other cultures.

Chick also participated in a somewhat remarkable recording in 1998: Like Minds, which features Gary Burton on vibes, Pat Metheny on guitar, Dave Holland on bass and Roy Haynes on drums.

Recent years have also seen Corea's rising interest in contemporary classical music. He composed his first piano concerto—and an adaptation of his signature piece, Spain for a full symphony orchestra—and performed it in 1999 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Five years later he composed his first work not to feature any keaboards: His String Quartet No. 1, specifically written for and performed by the highly acclaimed Orion String Quartet on 2004's Summerfest.

Corea has continued releasing highly ambitious jazz fusion concept albums such as To the Stars (2004) and Ultimate Adventure (2006).

Scientology

Corea discovered the work of author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1968, first becoming familiar with Dianetics but in the 1970s also developing an interest in his science fiction novels. Corea has mentioned Hubbard as a continual source of inspiration under the "special thanks" notes in all of his later albums. The two had personal contact; they exchanged letters until Hubbard's death in 1986, and Corea even did some work on music Hubbard had written, noting, "[Hubbard] was a great composer and keyboard player as well. He did many, many things. He was a true Renaissance Man."

Scientology became a profound influence on Corea's musical direction in the early 1970s, causing him to break up Circle and form Return to Forever. He described his change of motivation:

I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people. (Down Beat, October 21, 1976, p.47)

Corea created some of his Return to Forever compositions in collaboration with Neville Potter, a friend whom he had met through Scientology. Some of the other members of Return to Forever also took Scientology courses, and the name Return to Forever itself was, in Corea's words, "definitely influenced by the Hubbard's philosophy of the spirit. [...] It sort of nailed the spiritual intent of the music, [that it should] be pure."

Not all musicians he has collaborated with have been content with his views. Reportedly, Joe Farrell once told him not to "lay that Scientology shit" on him. Although Corea has stated that he requires "a certain amount of ethics" from anybody he works with, he has also expressed the belief:

The values that Scientology states are universal values. Values that any good mother or father or friend couldn't possibly disagree with. They're the values of health and improvement. It's not a belief system where you have to sign up and believe something particularly.

Many of his songs contain explicit references to Scientology and various works by Hubbard. For example, "What Games Shall We Play Today?" refers to the philosophical concept in Scientology that life consists of "games" in which the objective is to extract joy and satisfaction for oneself. His 2004 album To the Stars is a tone poem based on Hubbard's science fiction novel of the same name. His latest album, The Ultimate Adventure, is also based on a Hubbard novel, and features an all-star cast including Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, Airto Moreira, Hubert Laws, Frank Gambale, and his current group Touchstone, which features Paco de Lucía veterans Jorge Pardo, Carlos Benavent, and Rubem Dantas, among others.

Awards

Over the years, he has been nominated for 45 Grammy Awards out of which he has won 12:

Year	Award	Album/song
1976	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	No Mystery (with Return to Forever)
1977	Best arrangement of an instrumental recording	"Leprechaun's Dream", The Leprechaun
1977	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	The Leprechaun
1979	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	Friends
1980	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	Duet (with Gary Burton)
1982	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	In Concert, Zurich, Oct 28, 1979 (with Gary Burton)
1989	Best R&B instrumental performance	"Light Years", GRP Super Live In Concert (with Elektric Band)
1990	Best jazz instrumental performance, group	Akoustic Band (with Akoustic Band)
2000	Best instrumental solo	"Rhumbata", Native Sense (with Gary Burton)
2001	Best jazz instrumental performance	Like Minds (with Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes and Dave Holland)
2002	Best instrumental arrangement	"Spain for Sextet & Orchestra", Corea.Concerto
2004	Best jazz instrumental solo	"Matrix"

His 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Discography

See also

• Jazz fusion
• Miles Davis
• Weather Report
• Bitches Brew
• Analog synthesizer
• Chelsea, Massachusetts

References

• ChickCorea.com. [Official biography]
• ChickCorea.com. [Awards list]
• ChickCorea.com. [Replies to visitors' questions]
• [Jazzreview.com biography]
• [Verve Records] biography and discography
• [Interview with Chick Corea by Michael J Stewart]
• Herzig, Monika (October 1999). [Chick Corea - A Style Analysis]
• [Polydor Promo 1/73 (from The Boston Music Encyclopedia Project)]
• All Music Guide to Jazz - 4th Edition, Backbeat Books, November 1, 2002, ISBN 087930717X
• DeBarros, Paul (1998). "Reissuing Light as a Feather", Light as a Feather CD booklet
• Nicholson, Stuart (1999). "Reissuing My Spanish Heart", My Spanish Heart CD booklet
• Zwerin, Mike (February 2, 2000). [Chick Corea: The Chameleon]
• Murph, John (December 2, 2004). [Chick Corea Reaching for the Stars]. BET Jazz.
• [Digital Interviews: Chick Corea] (1999)
• [Talking to Les Tomkins in 1972]. Jazz Professional.

 

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