Mr. Corea, a jazz fusion pioneer whose best-known band, Return to Forever, merged genres and styles from across the musical spectrum and around the world, died on Tuesday. He was 79 years old and was recently diagnosed with a rare cancer, according to his website.
“I want to thank all those along my journey who helped to increase the intensity of the music,” he said in a statement on his website. “It is my hope that those who have a vague idea of playing, writing, acting or otherwise, will do so. If not for you, then for the rest of us. The world not only needs more artists, but also a lot of fun ”.
The fun started early for Mr. Corea. On the way to expanding jazz vocabulary, he embraced music and piano as more interesting alternatives for the rest of his young life.
“I remember very clearly going to the first grade in Chelsea, going for the first time in my life in this fixed environment, where at one point you had to come into the room and fold your hands, and then we had to put our heads in table and do silly things for me, ”he told the Globe in 1996.“ And I thought, ‘Well, it’s kind of cool, because I’m around kids my age’, but it was all like a dream.
“And after I left school every day and came home to my family and my piano, I thought, ‘This is reality.’ “
At 20, he played with jazz notables like Stan Getz, Herbie Mann and Miles Davis. Corea played on Davis’ 1970 album “Bitches Brew” – he once recalled that Davis instructed him to switch to electric piano in one session.
Shortly after “Bitches Brew”, Corea founded Return to Forever, which expanded the fusion of rock and jazz elements into “Bitches Brew”. On the band’s first eponymous album in 1972, he was accompanied by Stanley Clarke on bass, Flora Purim on vocals and percussion, Joe Farrell on flute and saxophone and Airto Moreira on drums.
“Our music has a simple and clear purpose: to communicate happiness and truth to people and to create and share some beauty with people,” Corea told the Globe in September. “Our trip is a group trip, to take people to a safe and beautiful place, instead of a place of conflict and chaos.”
Over the years, through the 1970s and in meetings that included a 2011 tour, Return to Forever changed in size and staff, at different times including musicians like guitarist Al Di Meola, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, percussionist Steve Gadd and guitarist Earl Klugh.
Mr. Corea also formed the Chick Corea Elektric Band and Chick Corea’s Akoustic Band, and he has performed and recorded on duet projects over the years with vibraphonist Gary Burton, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, classical pianist Friedrich Gulda and the banjo player Bela Fleck.
Reviewing a 1980 solo performance, Globe critic Ernie Santosuosso wrote that Corea’s “frantic flamenco style of playing the keyboard involves the listener almost hypnotically.”
On the presentation of a trio at Regattabar in 2000, Globe critic Bob Blumenthal wrote that Corea’s “recurring vampire staggered as if thrown into a cyclotron. The piano solo came with the rhythm of the front. “
Born in Chelsea on June 12, 1941, Armando Anthony Corea was the son of Armando J. and Anna Corea. His father played the trumpet in a band.
“Walking with my father and his orchestra, I had made a very clear decision, in particular, at the age of 5 or 6, which was what I wanted to do – make music,” recalls Corea in the 1996 interview with the Globe.
He also played the trumpet well enough to join the local drums and bugle as a young man, and played the drums in the 1960s, when “he couldn’t find shows with decent, tuned pianos”. But “the piano has always been my main ax,” he said in 2018.
“When I was about 8 or 9, my mom or uncle got me a show at a bar on the corner of Broadway and Everett Avenue in Chelsea,” said Corea. “They had an upright piano and my mom would bring me there to play. She would sit at the piano to protect me, I would play for about an hour at night and receive a tip or two. That was really cool. When I was in high school, there was a bar a few blocks from where we lived after we moved to Everett. I had a cool little trio there. There was a drummer and an accordion player, and I played the trumpet because they didn’t have a piano. “
As an interpreter, he was inspired by pianists such as classical musician Glenn Gould, whom he called his favorite influence. “All my contemporaries were influential: McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and, before that, Bill Evans. For the spirit of probing and freedom in jazz, Bud [Powell] and [Thelonious] Monk remains a touchstone. Also Duke Ellington, not only as a pianist, but also as a complete composer. One more should be included almost at the top – he is in a class alone – and this is Art Tatum. “
Mr. Corea studied music briefly in New York City, Columbia University and the Juilliard School, before becoming a full-time professional musician.
Along with his 23 Grammys (and 67 nominations), Mr. Corea was named Master of Jazz by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2006. In 1997, he gave his graduation speech when the Berklee College of Music awarded him an honorary degree.
According to the Associated Press, Mr. Corea, who lived in Clearwater, Florida, and was a member of the Church of Scientology, left his wife, singer Gayle Moran, and a son, Thaddeus.
A complete list of survivors and plans for a memorial service were not immediately available.
Mr. Corea has influenced generations of musicians with his cross-cultural approach and mixing genres for performance and composition, and with his unforgettable improvisation.
“When you compose or improvise, you are inventing something, creating something out of nothing, having an idea and then rendering it – boom! – like that ”, he said in 1996.“ If you continue this in a chain, in a flow, it becomes an improvisation. Like when a comedian grabs an idea and leaves, and it’s kind of coming out of it, this is improvisation. “
Bryan Marquard can be reached at [email protected].