Chick Coreas Lustrous Career As A Jazz Favorite

Chick Corea is one of the most popular and influential American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer. Some jazz experts support the idea that Chick surely participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement, but he also is the movement. His work is popular worldwide, creating many jazz standards and working with some of the top jazz artists in his career.

Chicks official birth name is Anthony Armando Corea and he was born in Chelsea, Massachussetts on June 12, 1941. He first sat down in front of a piano at the age of four with his fathers influence. Chicks father Armando was a bandleader in the in the '30s and '40s. Easily, Chick spent a great deal of his growing years listening to the music of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart. He even sat longingly listening to the musical recordings of Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver and Bud Powell. These musicians had an intrinsic bearing on the aspiring pianist.

In his early years, Chick worked for Herbie Mann, Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader. All of these great musicians influenced his love for Latin American music. Uniformly, you could listen to his music and hear his percussive beat and double time impression that pervades Latin music.

Interestingly, Corea worked with other greats such as Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Blue Mitchell and Gary Burton before joining up with the great talent of the Miles Davis' band in 1968. With Miles Band, he played electric piano on the highly acclaimed In a Silent Way album and the distinguished Bitches Brew.

Chick has created, performed and even recorded with many different musicians. Collaborating as a trio with Roy Haynes and Miroslav Vitous, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was created, a staple in the record collections of the late 1960s.

Coreas forward-thinking group Circle, from 1969 to 1971, was a pivotal force in free form improvisation, reflecting the influence of jazz musicians, such as Ornette Coleman and Paul Bley, while also drawing from 20th Century composers such as Karlheine Stockhausen and John Cage.

When Circle parted ways in 1972, Corea put together a new band, Return to Forever, with Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira, singer Flora Purim and reedman Joe Farrell. Following two albums of light, invigorating Latin-tinged music, the band slanted their work toward the electronic side of jazz by bringing in electric guitarist Bill Connors and energetic drummer Lenny White.

But as bands go through their changes, guitarist Al DiMeola replaced Connors in 1974, with Return to Forever leading the fusion movement until the band separated in 1976. For the next two years, Chick continued to tour with a small orchestra, consisting of a 13-piece ensemble that included horns and strings. Since that formable tour with the small orchestra, Chick has continued a lustrous career with Grammy awards, sold out venues and top-selling albums, engaging jazz lovers with straight-ahead jazz quartets to fusion quintets and trios to classical duets.

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