Obituaries
Not Fade Away
Fondly remembered this month…
CHICK COREA
Jazz fusion innovator
1941-2021
IT didn’t take long for pianist Chick Corea to shun formal education in favour of something more experiential. He briefly attended New York’s Columbia University and the Juilliard School but dropped out to investigate the city’s vibrant jazz scene. “I got a chance to listen to Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks,” he told NY Daily News in 2011. “It was a great education. There was myuniversity, man.”
Corea began with the likes of Mongo Santamaria, Blue Mitchell and Herbie Mann in the early ’60s, before making his solo debut with 1968’s Tones For Joan’s Bones (actually recorded in ’66). Miles Davis provided a gateway into jazz fusion when he hired him to play electric piano on 1968’s Filles De Kilimanjaro, with Corea becoming an integral part of the band for subsequent benchmarks In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew.
Shortly after appearing with Davis at 1970’s Isle Of Wight Festival, Corea left to form free-jazz ensemble Circle. The project proved short-lived, however, as Corea fully immersed himself in jazzrock fusion as co-founder of Return To Forever, whose ranks included bassist Stanley Clarke. The revolving collective merged jazz, funk, Latin music and other global influences to ravishing effect, with Corea’s melodic, harmony-rich piano lines to the fore. He continued his explorations throughout the band’s on-off career, juggling his time between solo albums and collaborative projects with vibraphonist Gary Burton, Friedrich Gulda, Bobby McFerrin and more.
With Corea originals such as “Spain”, “500 Miles” and “Armando’s Rhumba” now accepted as jazz standards, he received no less than 23 Grammy awards and, in 2006, the highest honour for an American jazz musician: a National Endowment for the Arts. Nevertheless, Corea still considered himself a student. “I don’t want to be a master,” he declared. “When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.”