Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Chick Corea is an American jazz pianist, electric keyboardist and composer born Armando Anthony Corea in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1941 and active until his death in 2021. He begins piano studies at the age of four and takes up drums at eight. Of southern Italian and Spanish descent, he becomes one of the most important jazz piano voices to emerge after John Coltrane, alongside Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Keith Jarrett.

Early career and jazz fusion

Corea joins Miles Davis’s band in the late 1960s and takes part in the development of jazz fusion and electric fusion. He also plays with Davis’s groups that record Bitches Brew. His work in this period places him at the centre of the shift from straight-ahead jazz into electric and experimental forms.

Return to Forever and other groups

In the 1970s he forms Return to Forever, a fusion group that becomes one of his best-known projects. In the 1980s he expands his work with the Chick Corea Elektric Band and the Chick Corea Akoustic Band. A third version of Return to Forever reunites in 2008 with Corea on keyboards, Stanley Clarke on bass, Lenny White on drums and Al Di Meola on guitar, and tours worldwide.

He also leads the Five Peace Band, which begins a world tour in 2008. That group includes John McLaughlin, with whom Corea has previously worked in Miles Davis’s late 1960s bands, as well as Kenny Garrett and Christian McBride. Vinnie Colaiuta plays with the band in Europe and on selected North American dates, while Brian Blade plays all dates in Asia and Australia and most dates in North America.

Music, collaborations and legacy

Corea works across a wide range of styles, including straight-ahead jazz, electric fusion, avant-garde music and orchestral music. He continues to collaborate and explore different musical directions through the 1980s and 1990s. In 2013 he forms Chick Corea & The Vigil, featuring Hadrien Feraud, Marcus Gilmore, Tim Garland and Charles Altura.

His compositions Spain, 500 Miles High, La Fiesta and Windows are widely regarded as jazz standards. In 2010 he enters the DownBeat Magazine Hall of Fame and is named Artist of the Year. A 2011 retrospective at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts highlights the range of his work. He dies in 2021.