Today, we received word that jazz piano giant Chick Corea passed away on February 9, 2021 after a brief illness from a rare form of cancer. He was 79.
This is one of those massive losses in both the jazz and piano worlds. It’s simply impossible to even summarize his impact on jazz and other forms of music in just a few paragraphs and there’s bound to be significant things left out below, but here goes …
We’ve written about Chick Corea plenty in this space, which is what any half-respectable music publication even part-time into jazz would probably do. Just a day or two after this webzine’s predecessor opened shop in 2006, we wasted no time gushing over Corea’s 1968 opus Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, a trio tour de force with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes that perfectly showcased his highly advanced skills leading, composing and playing when he was a relative unknown in the mid-twenties. But Miles Davis knew about him, and put him in his earliest fusion bands. Corea was on hand for Miles’ seminal records In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew before starting the free jazz collective Circle with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul.
After a memorable stint in Stan Getz’s band, Corea formed Return To Forever with bassist Stanley Clarke, one of the monumental 70s fusions bands spun off of Davis’ groundbreaking works in that newborn idiom. Under Corea’s leadership, RTF went through three or four completely different manifestations of rock-jazz that all broke ground, especially the Mk. II version that featured Al Di Meola (guitar) and Lenny White (drums). He made a successful revisit of this music form in the 80s with his Chick Corea Elektric Band, a band that launched the careers of many jazz and fusion aces who remain big players in the jazz scene today.
Aside from leading celebrated groups and his solo piano ventures, his one-on-one collaborations are the stuff of legend, too. The most successful and enduring one was his piano/vibes duets with another jazz icon, Gary Burton.
Mindful of his Latin heritage, Corea tried to raise awareness of the important influence Spanish and Brazilian styles have had on jazz, not by words but by the compositions he wrote; “Spain” is arguably is his most famous composition of all. One his final albums Antidote (2019) is a sequel to his 1976 release My Spanish Heart, where he brought Latin stylings into contemporary jazz. He’s made several other additions to the jazz canon of standards besides “Spain,” such as “Windows,” “500 Miles High”, “La Fiesta” and “Armando’s Rhumba.”
The first Chick Corea CD I bought — back in the late 80s — was the solo piano Piano Improvisations, Vol 2. Peaceful, meditative, intimate and at times frisky, listening to it is like peering into his soul and the perfect musical companion as I type out these thoughts. May that soul rest in eternal peace.
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