New York –
The highly decorated US jazz artist Chick Corea is dead. The 79-year-old composer and pianist died on Tuesday of a rare cancer disease, as announced on Corea’s official Facebook page and website.
According to the academy, he won the Grammy Music Prize 23 times, more than any other jazz musician. He has been nominated 67 times.
Corea was “undisputedly one of the most incredible jazz innovators of all time,” wrote the Grammy Academy after his death became known on Twitter. It was said that he had rewritten the rules of jazz for over five decades.
“Through his work and the decades he has spent traveling the world, he has touched and inspired the lives of millions of people,” his family said in their statement. British artist Yusuf / Cat Stevens described Corea as one of the “most innovative musicians” he has ever worked with.
In a recent BBC interview, Corea described himself as a composer, innovator and pianist. He called imagination his tool. The artist opened the door to the era of fusion of jazz and rock on the electric piano in Miles Davis’ ensembles from the end of the 1960s. In spite of everything, Corea always remained connected to the acoustic piano.
One of the last messages from Korea was conveyed on his website: The world needs more artists, he was quoted as saying. “My mission has always been to bring the joy of design wherever I could, and to do so with all the artists I admire so much – that has been the richness of my life.”
After the son of a trumpeter and bassist, who was born as Armando Anthony Corea, sat at the piano at the age of four and enjoyed early lessons, he played with saxophone legend Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie at a young age. He was influenced by Herbie Hancock and Thelonious Monk as well as by Latin American rhythms. Star trumpeter Davis recognized Corea’s talent and took him on tour instead of Hancock – with whom Corea would later go on a world tour.
As if all these names weren’t enough, Corea also began exploring other musical genres, for example on the Brazilian-themed album “Light as a Feather”, on which he shone with “500 Miles High” and “Spain”. Whether with electric guitarist Bill Connors, flamenco sounds on the album “My Spanish Heart” or his rocking electro-jazz of the 80s and 90s: while Corea’s fingers hovered over the keys, his jazz turned into a musical kaleidoscope. It was not for nothing that he named his label “Stretch Records”, founded in 1992, which was supposed to stretch boundaries and place creativity instead of genres.
Audiences and critics alike were fascinated by the fact that even the versatile and changeable music genre of jazz did not leave enough room for the curly hair. In addition, there was an unmistakable love for the game over five decades, during which Corea released more than 100 albums as a band leader and soloist. How connected he was to the music was shown by the fact that after a successful concert he often continued playing for hours on his own instead of mingling with the crowd at a bar.
Corea often reversed the popular contradiction between classical music and jazz with his playing, for example with his album “The Mozart Sessions”, which he recorded with Bobby McFerrin and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from Minnesota. The performance of his second piano concerto “The Continents” in the Vienna Mozart Year 2006 will remain unforgettable.
In 2020, the staunch Scientology supporter worked on a 45-minute homage to the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. But the corona pandemic thwarted his plans to perform his new composition live in Budapest. He then began broadcasting his piano playing live on Facebook. According to his own statements, this experience has brought him a lot of joy over the past few months. Instead of just playing in concert halls, Corea told the BBC that he could bring his live music straight to people’s homes. (dpa)
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