Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist.[2][3] His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards.[4] As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever.[3] Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.[5]
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony Corea
June 12, 1941
Chelsea, Massachusetts, U.S.
February 9, 2021 (aged 79)
Tampa, Florida, U.S.
- Musician
- composer
- bandleader
- Piano
- keyboards
- vibraphone
- drums
1962–2021[1]
Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated more than 70 times for the award.[6]
Early life and education[edit]
Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on June 12, 1941,[7] to parents Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea.[2][8] He was of southern Italian descent, his father having been born to an immigrant from Albi, a commune in the Province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region.[9][10] His father, a trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, introduced him to the piano at the age of four.[11] Surrounded by jazz, he was influenced at an early age by bebop and musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, and Lester Young.[12] He came into possession of a drumset at age 11,[13] and would occasionally play drums for the rest of his career.[14]
Corea developed his piano skills while exploring music on his own. A notable influence was concert pianist Salvatore Sullo, from whom Corea began taking lessons at age eight; Sullo introduced him to classical music, helping spark his interest in musical composition.[13]
Given a black tuxedo by his father, he started playing gigs while still in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroy's band at the time and had a trio that played Horace Silver's music at a local jazz club. He eventually moved to New York City, where he studied music at Columbia University, then transferred to the Juilliard School. He later dropped out so he could spend more time playing gigs.[8]
Personal life[edit]
Corea and his first wife Joanie had two children, Thaddeus and Liana; the marriage ended in divorce. In 1972, Corea married his second wife, vocalist/pianist Gayle Moran.[27][28]
In 1968, Corea read Dianetics, author L. Ron Hubbard's most well-known self-help book, and developed an interest in Hubbard's other works in the early 1970s: "I came into contact with L. Ron Hubbard's material in 1968 with Dianetics and it kind of opened my mind up and it got me into seeing that my potential for communication was a lot greater than I thought it was."[29]
Corea said that Scientology became a profound influence on his musical direction in the early 1970s: "I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people."[30] With Clarke[31] Corea played on Space Jazz: The soundtrack of the book Battlefield Earth, a 1982 album to accompany L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth.[32]
Corea was excluded from a concert during the 1993 World Championships in Athletics in Stuttgart, Germany. The concert's organizers excluded him after the state government of Baden-Württemberg had announced it would review its subsidies for events featuring avowed members of Scientology.[33][34] After Corea's complaint against this policy before the administrative court was unsuccessful in 1996,[35] members of the United States Congress, in a letter to the German government, denounced the ban as a violation of Corea's human rights.[36] Corea was not banned from performing in Germany, however, and had several appearances at the government-supported International Jazz Festival in Burghausen; he was awarded a plaque on Burghausen's "Street of Fame" in 2011.[37]
Corea died at his home in Tampa, Florida, from a rare cancer on February 9, 2021, shortly after his diagnosis. He was 79.[2][38][8]