Bio

Bio

Download Chick Corea Bio 2019

 

CHICK COREA

Biography

 

Chick Corea has attained iconic status in music. The keyboardist, composer and bandleader is a DownBeat Hall of Famer and NEA Jazz Master, as well as the fourth-most nominated artist in Grammy Awards history with 64 nods – and 22 wins, in addition to 4 Latin Grammys. From straight-ahead to avant-garde, bebop to jazz-rock fusion, children’s songs to chamber and symphonic works, Chick has touched an astonishing number of musical bases in his career since playing with the genre-shattering bands of Miles Davis in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Yet Chick has never been more productive than in the 21st century, whether playing acoustic piano or electric keyboards, leading multiple bands, performing solo or collaborating with a who’s who of music. Underscoring this, he has been named Artist of the Year three times this decade in the DownBeat Readers Poll. Born in 1941 in Massachusetts, Chick remains a tireless creative spirit, continually reinventing himself through his art. As The New York Times has said, he is “a luminary, ebullient and eternally youthful.”

Chick’s classic albums as a leader or co-leader include Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes), Paris-Concert (with Circle: Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul) and Return to Forever (with Return to Forever: Joe Farrell, Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim), as well as Crystal Silence (with Gary Burton), My Spanish HeartRemembering Bud Powell, and Further Explorations (with Eddie Gomez and Paul Motian).

 

A venturesome collaborator, Chick has teamed with artists from jazz legend Lionel Hampton to new-generation pianist Stefano Bollani, from banjoist Béla Fleck to vocal superstar Bobby McFerrin. Chick’s duo partnerships with Gary Burton and Herbie Hancock have endured decades.

 

In the ’80s and ’90s Chick continued to venture into new territory consistently, displaying his broad musical reach with his Elektric Band (which reunited in 2004) and Akoustic Band, as well as the exciting sextet Origin, whose Change album was called “a sparkling display for his lively post-bop playing” by Entertainment Weekly.

 

Chick’s 2014 release ranks as a new classic in his discography: Trilogy, a live triple-disc set with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade. Winner of two Grammys, the album documents this trio interpreting classic Chick compositions (such as “Spain”), plus previously unreleased pieces by the pianist (“Piano Sonata: The Moon”), an array of jazz standards and even a Prelude by Alexander Scriabin. Reviewing a stop on one of the trio’s globe-trekking tours, All About Jazz noted: “This one certainly ranks among his most memorable trios… [Corea] has never been more active—and with albums as superb as Trilogy… clearly at the top of his game.”

 

Rare for a “jazz musician,” Chick received the Richard J. Bogomolny Award from Chamber Music America in 2010, and he broke new ground as a composer with The Continents: Concerto for Jazz Quintet and Chamber Orchestra, released in 2013 by a storied classical label, Deutsche Grammophon. Chick recorded his first album of solo piano in 1971, and he continued his intimate journey with the instrument on Solo Piano – Portraits.

 

For a sold-out international tour and live album in 2008, Chick reconvened his pioneering jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever, which he founded in 1972. The core of the band – Chick with original member Stanley Clarke and veteran Lenny White – produced a Grammy-winning acoustic album in 2011 with Forever. Then a new version of Return to Forever – with Clarke, White, Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Gambale – toured the world to acclaim, yielding the live CD/DVD The Mothership Returns.

 

In another celebration of kindred spirits, Chick co-led the Five Peace Band with guitarist John McLaughlin, a fellow Miles Davis alum. The group won a Grammy for Five Peace Band Live, and the New Zealand Herald praised the quintet live as “jazz without compromise, invention without fear.” In 2011, Chick celebrated his 70th birthday in a big way at NYC’s famed Blue Note Jazz Club, with a month-long run that encompassed more than 40 performances with 10 different lineups – a staggering aggregation of musical friends and fellow-travelers that included Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, Wynton Marsalis, John McLaughlin and Stanley Clarke along with triumphal sets by his own legendary ensembles, the Chick Corea Elektric Band and Return to Forever. The momentous occasion was captured on The Musician, a live 3-CD and Blu-ray set. 

 

For the 2013 album The Vigil, Chick put together a new-era electro/acoustic quintet, featuring himself on keyboards and longtime associate Tim Garland on reeds, alongside some hot young players. Released in 2015, Twodocumented his constantly-evolving duet with Béla Fleck, the estimable banjoist. In an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered, recorded during their US tour celebrating album’s release, Chick said the duet is “like a friendly, very fast-moving ping-pong game… It opens up whole new ideas for me of how to integrate my phrases. I’m always thinking about accompanying. So that’s my pleasure in the duet, is to see how I can make the banjo sound good.” The same year, Chick embarked on a hugely acclaimed world tour with fellow piano legend Herbie Hancock, reuniting for their first full-scale tour as a duo since 1978.

 

Recently, Chick finds himself as active as he’s ever been. In 2017, he released the adventurous multi-generational session Chinese Butterfly, reuniting him with legendary drummer Steve Gadd, a friend and collaborator for more than 50 years. The album draws on the pair’s shared history in the wealth of styles and innovations it covers, while continuing to push forward into adventurous new territory with the aid of an inspired band of collaborators.

On Chick’s most recent release, The Spanish Heart Band - Antidote, he introduces a stunning new band of musicians from Spain, Cuba, Venezuela and the U.S. with whom he delves deeply into the Spanish, Latin and Flamenco traditions that have indelibly shaped his unmistakable sound. A musical cure for turbulent times, the album unites artists from diverse cultures to make harmonious music together. The wide-ranging repertoire revisits classic pieces from two of Chick’s most beloved albums, My Spanish Heart and Touchstone, along with new compositions and favorites by revered composers like Antônio Carlos Jobim, Paco de Lucía and Igor Stravinsky.