Chick Corea, performing at Las Noches del Botánico in Madrid in July 2019.NurPhoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Armando Anthony
Chick
Corea died this Tuesday of cancer at the age of 79, according to his Facebook page.
In it, the jazz legend has left a farewell message: “I want to thank everyone who has helped me on my journey to keep the fire of music burning [...].
The world not only needs more artists, but also a lot of fun.
To all my musician friends who have been my family: it has been an honor and a blessing to learn and play with you.
My mission was always to bring the joy of creativity wherever I could, and having achieved it with the artists I have admired has become the wealth of my life ”.
According to the same statement, the cancer had recently been diagnosed.
Chick Corea: "I see musicians as the last romantic warriors"
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In this way, the composer and pianist said goodbye, after a lifetime dedicated to music.
Because Chick Corea, who was born in Chelsea (Massachusetts) in 1941, started playing the piano when he was 4 years old.
After gaining experience in the bands of Herbie Mann and Stan Getz, he joined the Miles Davis band, gradually replacing Herbie Hancock, and it was Davis who pushed him to play the electric piano, which led them to jazz fusion.
At the end of 1971 he founded the mythical band Return to Forever, which was joined by Al Di Meola in 1974. They played clearly rock-inspired music, but with all kinds of jazz variations.
About his life as a musician, five years ago he said in an interview in EL PAÍS: “You spend half your life going from one place to another by bus, looking for a place to sleep and eat, every night a different setting ... and all that is left behind when you go on stage.
I see musicians as the last romantic warriors.
Because you have to be a warrior to endure what the musician supports ”.
And asked about the style of his band, The Vigil his new band, he reflected: “It is very difficult for me to talk about the music we make.
I think there are no words to define it:
jazz-rock?
Latin
jazz
?
Free improvisation?
Classical music?… Our music is all that and much more.
What name to put to what we do?
The answer is the music itself.
Because music, the real one, has no name ”.
And that was valid for his entire career.
It is with great sadness we announce that on February 9th, Chick Corea passed away at the age of 79, from a rare form of ...
Posted by Chick Corea on Thursday, February 11, 2021
In those seventies he investigated all kinds of styles, including his attraction to Spanish music: “In 1976 I edited the album
My Spanish Heart
with which I wanted to leave testimony of my love for Spanish musical culture, understanding by such not only the one that proceeds of peninsular Spain but also that of the historical territories in which Spanish is spoken, as well as the Middle East and Africa.
I feel very connected to that world.
Every time I come to Spain, I feel at home.
Their culture is, in a way, mine ”.
From his prolific career, from his immense talent, jazz standards such as
Spain
,
500 Miles High
,
Armando's rhumba
,
La fiesta
and
Windows,
mythical collaborations with Herbie Hancock or Paco de Lucía, and stellar bands like the one that joined him in the middle of of the nineties in a quintet that included Kenny Garrett and Wallace Roney and with whom he played versions of songs by Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk.
Winner of 23 Grammy Awards, Korea is the fourth most nominated artist of these music awards, with 65 nominations.