Chick Corea’s influence on jazz music has been profound, not only as a pianist, but also as a composer and bandleader. Over the years, Corea has been active in several styles of jazz, including Latin, jazz rock, mainstream, free, and modal, and has established himself as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed jazz pianists of the late 20th century.
Born on June 12, 1941, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Armando Anthony Corea began playing piano when he was just six years old and learning drums at the age of eight. His earliest gigs were with his father, who was a jazz trumpeter and arranger. He briefly attended the Juilliard School of Music, New York, before joining the Latin-jazz bands of Mongo Santamaria and Willy Bobo (1962–63). Work with Blue Mitchell, Stan GETZ, Herbie Mann, and Sarah VAUGHAN followed.
By 1966, Corea was leading his own groups, and his first recording, the hard-bop influenced Tones for Joan’s Bones, appeared in the same year. His album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs(1968) was widely influential and helped to define an ultra-modern style of jazz piano. Between 1968 and 1970, Corea toured with Miles DAVIS’S jazz-rock ensembles. Corea’s free-jazz style of electric piano became an integral part of Davis’s early experiments with fusion.
Touring with Davis made Corea an international star, but he left Davis in 1970 and spent a year in Europe, where he recorded his two classically influenced solo albums, Piano Improvisations, Vols. 1 and 2. In 1971, he formed the avant-garde group, Circle, with Dave Holland (bass), Anthony Braxton (reeds), and Barry Altschul (drums). Circle only lasted a year, but its pioneering abstract jazz was captured on a live double album in Paris and two studio albums for Blue Note. Corea left the group toward the end of 1971, feeling that people were not “connecting” with his music.
In 1972, Corea formed the influential electric jazz-rock group Return to Forever (RTF). The group’s original line-up included vocalist Flora Purim, percussionist Airto Moreiro (both Brazilian), and Stanley Clarke on bass. As the group’s personnel changed, the strong Latin flavour of RTF gave way to a more rock-orientated sound. It later leaned toward classical music, using string sections and brass groups. One of the most successful fusion groups of the 1970s, RTF finally disbanded in 1980, although they got together again for a reunion tour in 1983.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Corea began to concentrate more on acoustic piano, and won praise for his successful collaborations with Herbie HANCOCK and Gary BURTON. In 1994, Corea recorded Mozart’s concerto for two pianos, and later composed his own piano concerto, which had its premiere in the U.S. in 1986. He returned to electric keyboards the same year, forming the Elektric Band with John Patitucci (bass) and Dave Weckl (drums), and emphasised more mainstream jazz styles with his 1989 Akoustic Band. In the 1990s he made several solo tours.
Corea was one of the first pianists to pioneer the use of synthesizers in jazz in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and he has continued to use synthesizers extensively. Many of his compositions—such as “La Fiesta” and “Windows"—are now firmly established as part of the jazz repertoire. Corea’s compositions tend to be complex, with highly syncopated and convoluted melodies and tightly rehearsed ensemble passages. These characteristics are clearly evident in tracks as far apart chronologically as “Spain” (1972) and “Stretch It” (1990). In his own words, Corea strives to incorporate the “subtlety and beauty of harmony, melody, and form” of classical music with the “looseness and rhythmic dancing quality of jazz and more folky music.”
Paul Rinzler
SEE ALSO:
FREE JAZZ; HARD BOP; JAZZ; JAZZ ROCK
FURTHER READING
Lyons, Len. The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their Lives and Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Elektric Band; Expression; Eye of the Beholder; Light As a Feather; Now He Sings, Now He Sobs; Paris Concert; Piano Improvisations, Vols. 1 and 2; Return to Forever; Three Quartets.