Chick Corea

He was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist.  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 one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.his compositions “Spain“, “500 Miles High“, “La Fiesta”, “Armando’s Rhumba”, and “Windows” are widely considered jazz standards.

Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Corea’s 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1997, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.^[35] In 2010, he was named Doctor Honoris Causa at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated over 60 times.

Corea celebrated his 75th birthday in 2016 by playing with more than 20 different groups during a six-week stand at the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, New York City. “I pretty well ignore the numbers that make up ‘age’. It seems to be the best way to go. I have always just concentrated on having the most fun I can with the adventure of music.” Corea died of a rare form of cancer, which had been only recently diagnosed, at his home in the Tampa Bay area of Florida on February 9, 2021, at the age of 79.