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Chick Corea, Jazz Pianist Who Expanded the Possibilities of the Genre, Dead at 79
Keyboardist helped Miles Davis usher in the fusion revolution and founded his own revolutionary groups, including Return to Forever

HANK SHTEAMER
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 4:26PM EST

Jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea poses for a portrait in Clearwater, Fla., on Sept. 4, 2020, to promote his new double album "Plays," available on Friday Sept. 11. (Mike Carlson/Invision/AP)
Mike Carlson/Invision/AP
Chick Corea, the virtuosic keyboardist who broadened the scope of jazz during a career spanning more than five decades, died on Tuesday from a rare form of cancer. A post on his Facebook page confirmed the news. Corea was 79.

In the early Sixties, Corea established himself as an A-list pianist, working with Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, and others. Later in the decade, he joined Miles Davis’ band and played a key role in helping the trumpeter make the transition to a more contemporary, plugged-in sound on albums like Bitches Brew. Following his work with Davis, he formed his own groundbreaking electric band, Return to Forever, which played some of the most vibrant and dynamic music of the fusion era. In the ensuing decades, Corea threw himself into countless projects, showing off his limitless range — from a duo with vibraphonist Gary Burton to his trendsetting Elektric Band. His most recent album, the 2020 live solo disc Plays, showed off his wildly diverse skill set and body of influences, touching on classical pieces, bebop, and more.

“What making music for people does, I’ve observed, is it stimulates what’s natural in all of us,” Corea told Jazz Times in 2020. “It’s native sense, in every person. You don’t have to be a professional anything — all you need to do is be a living human being, and open to the play of imagination.”

Chick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79

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When jazz and rock fused in the 1970s, he was at the forefront of the movement. But he never abandoned his love of the acoustic piano.

By Giovanni Russonello
Feb. 11, 2021
Updated 6:08 p.m. ET

Chick Corea, an architect of the jazz-rock fusion boom in the 1970s who spent more than a half century as one of the foremost pianists in jazz, died on Tuesday at home in Tampa Bay, Fla. He was 79.

The cause was cancer, said Dan Muse, a web and marketing manager for Mr. Corea.

Mr. Corea’s most famous band was Return to Forever, a collective with a rotating membership that nudged the genre of fusion into greater contact with Brazilian, Spanish and other global influences. It also provided Mr. Corea with a palette on which to experiment with a growing arsenal of new technologies.

But throughout his career, he never abandoned his first love, the acoustic piano, on which his punctilious touch and crisp sense of harmony made his playing immediately distinctive.

By the late 1960s, Mr. Corea, still in his 20s, had already established himself as a force to be reckoned with. He gigged and recorded with some of the leading names in straight-ahead and Latin jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Mongo Santamaria and Sarah Vaughan. His first two albums as a leader, “Tones for Joan’s Bones” and “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” — both released in 1968, and now considered classics — earned rave reviews.
But it was playing in Miles Davis’s ensembles that set Mr. Corea on the path that would most clearly define his role in jazz. He played the electric piano on Davis’s “In a Silent Way” (1969) and “Bitches Brew” (1970), the albums that are widely considered to have sounded the opening bell for the fusion era.

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Mr. Corea helped found Return to Forever in 1971, and spent much of the rest of the decade touring with the band, which became one of the most popular instrumental ensembles of its era.

Reviewing a performance by Mr. Corea in 2006 for The New York Times, the critic Nate Chinen reminisced on the innovative sound that Mr. Corea had honed with Return to Forever three decades before.

“His Fender Rhodes piano chimed and chirruped over Latin American rhythms; female vocals commingled with the soothing flutter of a flute,” Mr. Chinen wrote. “Then the ensemble muscled up and morphed into a hyperactive fusion band, establishing pop-chart presence and a fan base to match. To the extent that there is a Return to Forever legacy, it encompasses both these dynamic extremes, each a facet of Mr. Corea’s personality.”

By the time of that Blue Note show, Mr. Corea’s career was entering a chapter of happy reminiscence, full of reunion concerts and retrospective projects. But he continued to build out from the groundwork he had lain. In 2013, for instance, he released two albums introducing new bands: “The Vigil,” featuring an electrified quintet of younger musicians, and “Trilogy,” an acoustic-trio album on which he was joined by the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Brian Blade.

He kept up a busy touring schedule well into his late 70s, and his performances at the Blue Note in particular often combined reunions with longtime associates and collaborations with younger accompanists, mixing nostalgia with a will to forge ahead. Those performances often found their way onto albums, including “The Musician” (2017), a three-disc collection drawn from his nearly two-month-long residency at the club in 2011, when he was celebrating his 70th birthday in the company of such fellow luminaries as Hancock, Clarke and Bobby McFerrin.

A complete obituary will appear shortly.

For some of us of a certain age, this is indeed a sad day. Rest in peace, Mr. Corea.

And another legend passes... a sad day.

An amazing musician - in the truest sense of the word.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/zKfcMxt8AJI[/youtube]

Chick was so good,
sad to hear he passed Tuesday
Feliz bailando sueño señor ratón ❤

Thanks, Wayne. I've been bingeing Corea concerts on Y'allTube all evening, and that's one of the best.

In the summer of 1988, I saw one of the best concerts ever; first half was Herbie Hancock with Michael Brecker and Darryl Jones on bass (Miles Davis' nephew IIRC) and the second half, the Chick Corea Elektric Band. It was an unbelievable show that still defies words. As a budding electric bass player at the time, I couldn't get enough of Jones or Pattitucci and I didn't really appreciate Brecker's artistry until later. Ah, to hear that show live again.

Thought you all might enjoy this.

Adding:

Bought my first Return to Forever album in 1980, I think. Outstanding musician.

This is an excellent recent performance:

A couple of years ago he was playing at the Blue Note in NYC with Steve Gadd. We had tickets but got their late and had perhaps the worst seats in the house to see things. The good thing about music, however, is that we could just listen and the band was incredible. I'm so appreciative that I had the chance to hear him live. He leaves an incredible musical legacy

More Chick Corea and Gary Burton. I can listen to these two guys forever.

https://youtu.be/khwF8v6voIE

Another nice little tribute:

Something I'll always remember is Oystein telling me that he almost had Chick do a concert with him at ITEC 2002 in Greensboro. There was just a scheduling conflict keeping Chick from making the conference.

Pretty sure that would have been one of the most legendary ITEC performances.

Never much listened to his stuff in depth, but that Trio with John Pattitucci and Dave Weckl was on fire. Such an inventive Pianist. RIP

matt g wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:11 am Another nice little tribute:

Outstanding.