Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and sometimes played percussion. His songs "Spain," "500 Miles High," "La Fiesta," "Armando's Rhumba," and "Windows" are considered important pieces in jazz.
As part of the Miles Davis band in the late 1960s, Corea helped create jazz fusion. In the 1970s, he started a group called Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is seen as one of the most respected pianists after the time of John Coltrane.
Corea worked with many musicians and explored different types of music during the 1980s and 1990s. He won 29 Grammy Awards and was nominated for the award 79 times.
Early life and education
Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to parents named Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea. His father’s family came from Albi, a town in the Province of Catanzaro, which is in the Calabria region of Italy. His father, a trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in Boston during the 1930s and 1940s, taught him to play the piano when he was four years old. Growing up in a home filled with jazz, he was influenced by bebop and musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, and Lester Young at a young age. At 11 years old, he received a drumset and occasionally played drums throughout his career.
Corea improved his piano skills by exploring music on his own. At first, his father taught him piano, but later, his father believed it was best for him to learn from a professional teacher. When he was eight years old, he began taking lessons from Italian concert pianist Salvatore Sullo. Sullo focused on teaching classical piano rather than jazz, but learning classical music helped Corea develop an interest in composing music.
His father gave him a black tuxedo, and he started performing at events while still in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroy’s band and played in a trio that performed music by Horace Silver at a local jazz club. Later, he moved to New York City, where he studied music at Columbia University before transferring to the Juilliard School. Eventually, he left school to spend more time performing at gigs.
Career
In the early 1960s, Corea began his professional career by recording and touring with musicians such as Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Herbie Mann, and Stan Getz. In 1966, he released his first album, Tones for Joan's Bones. In March 1968, he recorded a well-received trio album titled Now He Sings, Now He Sobs with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Miroslav Vitouš.
In the fall of 1968, Corea joined Miles Davis's band. He appeared on several important Davis studio albums, including Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and On the Corner. He also performed on later compilation albums such as Big Fun, Water Babies, and Circle in the Round. Corea left Davis's group shortly after the band's performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.
Bassist Dave Holland left Davis's group with Corea to form a new band called Circle, which included multireedist Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul. Circle was active from 1970 to 1971 and recorded for Blue Note and ECM. In 1971, Corea began playing solo piano at the request of ECM producer Manfred Eicher. He recorded Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 and Piano Improvisations Vol. 2 that year. In 1974, Corea collaborated with Richie Grasso on Grasso's album Season of Grace, produced by Morris Levy's Tiger Lily Records.
Corea's band Return to Forever, named after their 1972 album, combined acoustic and electronic instruments and initially used Hispanic music styles more than rock. The group's first two records included Flora Purim on vocals and percussion, Joe Farrell on flute and soprano saxophone, Airto on drums and percussion, and Stanley Clarke on acoustic double bass. Later, drummer Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors joined Corea and Clarke. This version of the band blended Latin music with rock and funk. They recorded the album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy before Connors was replaced by Al Di Meola, who later played on Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery, and Romantic Warrior.
In 1976, Corea released My Spanish Heart, influenced by Hispanic music. The album featured vocalist Gayle Moran (Corea's wife) and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. It combined jazz and flamenco, supported by a Minimoog synthesizer and a horn section. Years later, Corea collaborated with flamenco guitarist Paco De Lucía on the albums Touchstone and Zyryab.
In the 1970s, Corea worked with vibraphonist Gary Burton. They recorded several duet albums for ECM, including Crystal Silence in 1972. They reunited in 2006 for a concert tour. A new album called The New Crystal Silence was released in 2008 and won a Grammy Award in 2009. The album includes a disc of duets and another disc with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Corea performed in a series of concerts with pianist Herbie Hancock. The concerts took place in elegant settings, with both artists dressed formally and playing on concert grand pianos. They performed each other's compositions, as well as pieces by other composers like Béla Bartók and duets. In 1982, Corea performed a live duet with classical pianist Friedrich Gulda titled The Meeting.
In December 2007, Corea recorded a duet album, The Enchantment, with banjoist Béla Fleck. Fleck and Corea toured widely for the album in 2007. Fleck was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Instrumental Composition category for the track "Spectacle."
In 2008, Corea collaborated with Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara on the live album Duet (Chick Corea and Hiromi). The duo performed at Tokyo's Budokan arena on April 30.
In 2015, Corea and Hancock revived their duet concert series, using a dueling-piano format. Both artists incorporated synthesizers into their performances. The first concert in this series took place at Seattle's Paramount Theatre and included improvisations, compositions by the duo, and standards by other composers.
Corea was part of several other bands, including the Chick Corea Elektric Band, its trio version called "Akoustic Band," Origin, and its trio version called the New Trio. In 1986, Corea signed a record deal with GRP Records, leading to the release of ten albums between 1986 and 1994, including seven with the Elektric Band, two with the Akoustic Band, and a solo album, Expressions.
The Akoustic Band released a self-titled album in 1989 and a live follow-up, Alive, in 1991. Both albums featured John Patitucci on bass and Dave Weckl on drums. This marked a return to traditional jazz trio instrumentation in Corea's career, and most of his later recordings focused on acoustic piano.
In 1992, Corea started his own label, Stretch Records. In 1998, he participated in Like Minds, a project with Gary Burton, Dave Holland, Roy Haynes, and Pat Metheny. In 2001, the Chick Corea New Trio, with bassist Avishai Cohen and drummer Jeff Ballard, released the album Past, Present & Futures. The album included one standard piece, Jitterbug Waltz, and ten original compositions by Corea.
Later in his career, Corea explored classical music. He composed his first piano concerto, an adaptation of his piece "Spain" for a full symphony orchestra, and performed it in 1999 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2004, he composed his first work without keyboards, String Quartet No. 1, for the Orion String Quartet, which was performed at Summerfest in Wisconsin.
Corea continued recording fusion albums, such as To the Stars (2004) and The Ultimate Adventure (2006). The latter won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album in 2007.
In 2008, the third version of Return to Forever (Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Al Di Meola) reunited for a worldwide tour. The reunion received positive reviews, and most of the group's studio recordings were re-released in a
Personal life
Corea and his first wife, Joanie, had two children. Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1972, Corea married his second wife, Gayle Moran, who was a singer and pianist.
In 1968, Corea read Dianetics, a well-known self-help book written by L. Ron Hubbard. This book sparked his interest in Hubbard’s other works in the early 1970s. Corea said, “I came into contact with L. Ron Hubbard’s material in 1968 with Dianetics, and it kind of opened my mind up and got me to see that my potential for communication was greater than I thought.”
Corea stated that Scientology had a major impact on his musical direction in the early 1970s. He said, “I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really wanted to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.” With Clarke, Corea played on Space Jazz, the soundtrack for the book Battlefield Earth, a 1982 album that accompanied L. Ron Hubbard’s novel Battlefield Earth.
In 1993, Corea was not allowed to perform at a concert during the World Championships in Athletics in Stuttgart, Germany. The organizers excluded him after the state government of Baden-Württemberg announced it would review financial support for events featuring people who openly belong to Scientology. Corea’s complaint to an administrative court in 1996 was not successful. Later, members of the United States Congress wrote a letter to the German government, saying the ban violated Corea’s human rights. Corea was not banned from performing in Germany and later played at the government-supported International Jazz Festival in Burghausen. In 2011, he was awarded a plaque on Burghausen’s “Street of Fame.”
Corea died at his home in Tampa, Florida, on February 9, 2021, shortly after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He was 79 years old.
Awards and honors
In 1997, Corea received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.
In 1999, Corea's album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (1968) was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.
In 2010, Corea was given the title Doctor Honoris Causa by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
By February 2026, Corea had received 29 Grammy Awards and had been nominated for the award 79 times in total.