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    Review: Thanks to Chick Corea, the Trombone Is a Philharmonic Star

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    The jazz composer wrote a new concerto for the New York Philharmonic’s principal trombonist, Joseph Alessi, but died before its U.S. premiere.There are not exactly a wealth of great concertos written for the trombone, that largely unheralded stalwart of the brass section. (Insert sad trombone sound here.) If anyone is going to change this state of affairs, it’s Joseph Alessi, the principal trombone of the New York Philharmonic. He’s an idol of legions of brass players for his rich tone, exemplary phrasing and virtuosic precision.In 1992, Alessi premiered Christopher Rouse’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Trombone Concerto. Almost three decades later, Alessi asked the widely loved jazz keyboardist and composer Chick Corea, who was enmeshed with classical music throughout his life, to create a trombone concerto. That work received its U.S. premiere at the Philharmonic on Thursday evening, performed by Alessi under the baton of Marin Alsop, another artist who easily code switches between jazz and classical idioms.The premiere was originally scheduled for the orchestra’s 2020-21 season. But with the onset of the pandemic, those plans were abandoned. Corea died of cancer in February 2021, and the concerto stands as his last finished work. (A recording, with Alessi as soloist, is scheduled for release this November on the Parma record label.)The four-movement work features a huge battery of percussion instruments — including gongs, marimba, xylophone and African cowbells — that lend a new palette of shimmering colors to the orchestra. And it shows off the marvel of Alessi’s technique and musicianship: in the first movement’s bluesy slides, in the lyrical tenderness of a second-movement waltz, and in devilish 16th-note runs in “Hysteria,” the third movement, which Corea wrote as pandemic lockdowns were just beginning. A final tango draws together the soloist and orchestra, before allowing Alessi to finish triumphantly on a series of high F sharps, venturing into trumpet territory.Corea had intended to play the prominent piano part in early performances. Instead, John Dickson, who orchestrated the concerto, is performing it with the Philharmonic. As an encore, Alessi introduced Dickson and they played a brief homage to Corea written by Dickson. It was a heartfelt adieu to their mutual friend and collaborator.The program opened with Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1. Written when Barber was just 25, it’s a mature wonder of a work, woefully under-programmed. (The last time the Philharmonic played it was during the Clinton administration.) Among its pleasures are declarative brass, crisp percussion, richly colored string writing and an exquisitely lyrical third movement.The New York Philharmonic musicians have finally relaxed into trusting the acoustics in David Geffen Hall. Gone is their urge to push hard to be heard — a necessity before the renovation. Instead, they now luxuriate in the chance to sculpt sound in space.Alsop celebrated that ability in 12 selected movements from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” Suites Nos. 1, 2 and 3, beginning with the fiery opening blasts of “The Montagues and the Capulets” and ending with the tear-stained “Death of Juliet.” Alsop drew out all the sharp accents and quick turns in “The Death of Tybalt,” and made the most of the silvery charm of the “Aubade.”Her vivid sense of color and rhythmic clarity framed Prokofiev’s ballet music as an exciting complement to the Barber Symphony, written the same year as some of the Prokofiev selections. This kind of creative juxtaposition, in which one piece illuminates another, is the essence of good concert programming.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Chick Corea, the Master Mixer of Jazz’s Past and Future

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      An eclectic array of musicians will gather in New York to celebrate the pianist’s legacy. Five collaborators and admirers discuss his experiments, artistry and generosity.When the groundbreaking pianist Chick Corea died unexpectedly, at 79, last February, he left a legacy of experimentation, preserving and expanding the jazz tradition. Over more than a half-century, he deftly navigated the music’s continually shifting boundaries. Corea started his career playing with the Afro-Cuban percussionist Willie Bobo and spent time with the bossa nova stalwart Stan Getz. His presence in Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew” ensemble, and later, his leading role in Return to Forever, gave him a seminal role in the origins of 1970s jazz fusion.But Corea didn’t stop there, devoting himself to straight-ahead jazz trios and quartets; duos with greats like Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett; outside-the-box collaborations with the bluegrass banjo player Béla Fleck; and even to playing Mozart Concertos with Bobby McFerrin. His long stint with the Elektric Band showed he never abandoned fusion, and his 2019 release, “Antidote,” recorded with an array of Spanish and Latin American musicians, renewed his early passion for Latin sounds. Over the course of his career, he won 25 Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards and was nominated for more than 60 others.Friday and Saturday at Lincoln Center, an all-star lineup of musicians who either played with Corea or were strongly influenced by him will come together for concerts that reimagine his classic compositions.“Chick had this way of instilling in us that if someone is trying to define what jazz is or isn’t for you, you don’t have to accept it,” the bassist John Patitucci, a longtime member of the Elektric Band and musical director of the shows, said in a phone interview. “He was extremely affirming with all of us, and he was funny — hysterically funny.”The shows will be more than just a tribute; they will allow Corea’s colleagues to recapture his energy, focused determination and generosity of spirit. In a recent interview, five musicians — Rubén Blades, Béla Fleck, Christian McBride, Renee Rosnes and Corea’s widow, Gayle Moran, a singer and keyboardist who was by his side till the end — discussed how deeply he connected with his collaborators when creating music and the ways he touched them personally. (All but Fleck will take part in the Lincoln Center event, which was postponed from January.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did Corea’s experiments in jazz fusion and eclecticism inspire you?CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE I think there’s this accepted narrative, like, there was quote unquote, “no jazz in the ’70s” and people like Chick, Herbie, Weather Report, George Duke all turned their backs on jazz. I’m not exactly sure how so many critics and writers missed all these great albums that Chick did in addition to his Return to Forever albums, which were also great. Anytime you got a group with people like Bill Connors and Al Di Meola, that was the peak of Return to Forever. I mean, how can anyone not like Flora Purim and Joe Farrell [who played important roles on a few Return to Forever albums]? That band was absolutely crystalline, everything they did was just gorgeous.RENEE ROSNES His fusion playing — electric playing, whatever genre you want to call it — was as harmonically and rhythmically complex as all the music he wrote. It wasn’t that anything was dumbed down. It was all beautiful, and from his very individual mind. He remained curious, whether it was classical, bebop, Latin, electric, acoustic. He really had a limitless range and he seemed to be fearless. He didn’t really seem to care what anyone thought, what the critics thought, he would just go ahead and make the music he wanted to make.“He really had a limitless range and he seemed be fearless,” Renee Rosnes said.Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)BÉLA FLECK It just was all music to him. So I don’t know if there was much of a line between the different styles. In terms of Return to Forever, for me, I don’t think I would be doing anything I’m doing if it wasn’t for that band. In 1975, I saw them at the Beacon Theater and I wouldn’t have gone on to try to play the banjo the way I play. I wouldn’t have had the Flecktones. Fusion has almost gotten a bad name or something, but if you go back to the original stuff, this music had a lot of intelligence to it. It was not just rock with jazz. It was its own thing. It really was a fusion.RUBÉN BLADES Chick was always curious, and I think that that is the real definition of an intellectual, an artist constantly curious. He collaborated with a lot of different people and showed them ways that perhaps were not clear to them at the time, no matter how successful they were. The opportunities that he created for music to go forward are impossible to consider as a whole. He was just an incredibly curious and talented man.Corea was unusually attentive in the way he worked with musicians, his sense of generosity and mentoring. Can you talk about that?FLECK He had this thing about giving permission to everybody to do what they needed to do, or what they ought to do, which was be themselves. One of the first times he came to play with me in the Flecktones in Nashville, we did an interview and the idea of rules came up in music and he said something like: “Well, there are no rules. If there’s anybody out there who thinks there’s any rules, I hereby give you permission to ignore them.” When we were in the airports, you’re standing in a line and there’d be those barriers, and he would always walk around and pop them out so that people wouldn’t have to stand on the lines anymore.“This music had a lot of intelligence to it,” Béla Fleck said. “It was not just rock with jazz. It was its own thing. It really was a fusion.”Jessica Hill/Associated PressMCBRIDE I was very fortunate to play with Chick a lot with Roy Haynes. Even though it was Chick’s band, he always put the power with Roy. We went on the road with the Remembering Bud Powell Quintet in the summer of 1996 and I remember after we rehearsed each arrangement, Chick would say something like, “Roy, is that cool?” You know, “Is that the right vibe?” And it made me love Chick even more because even though it was his band, he was checking with Roy Haynes to make sure everything was cool.FLECK Because I play with different kinds of people, I get asked, “How do you play all this stuff?” And I say, “I really don’t. I just play like myself all the time, and it’s the people around me that change.” He was just so him, anything he did had the stamp. I mean, is there any Chick Corea thing you could hear that you wouldn’t know? It was him within three or four notes. So he just had this language.MCBRIDE Even with the Foo Fighters.ROSNES Or even going right back to the very beginning, you know, the beginning of when he was playing with Mongo Santamaría, Cal Tjader — I mean, he still sounded like himself even then.GAYLE MORAN He really wanted to be a better classical player, and he worked at it. He practiced Mozart over and over and over. He said to me more than once, “If I could practice 24 hours a day, maybe someday I’ll be a pretty good piano player.” He says that to me [laughs], yeah!What kind of things did Chick share about his influences and the musicians he played with?MORAN I got this little family concert together because the doctor told me it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t tell anybody that news — we were celebrating our anniversary coming up. We all started “All Blues,” the famous Miles tune, and it was really beautiful. And he just very gently raised up his hand and said: “That is so beautiful. Now I want to show you the original arrangement that Miles taught me.” And he took his time and energy to teach everybody — When does the melody come? When does the piano come? His eyes brightened up when he was talking, and we played it and he gave everybody a thumbs up and, and we were supposed to have one more concert the next night. He wasn’t strong enough. And then he had this next adventure.MCBRIDE Chick deeply loved Horace Silver, and I don’t think a lot of people draw that line between Horace and Chick. He would talk about Horace so much and how much he influenced the structure of his writing. He was telling me the story about when he first joined the Blue Mitchell-Junior Cook Quintet, which was basically the old Horace Silver Band, and he was like, man, I always feel like the one thing I was never really that great at was playing the blues. I was like, Chick, I’m going to blindfold test you, and I played a recording of him playing with Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook. And I said, this cat sounds a lot like Wynton Kelly. And he’s like, yeah, that’s swinging. And then like after about eight bars, he went, wait a second — and I said, yeah, you can very much play the blues. You funky as hell, Chick!“That band was absolutely crystalline,” Christian McBride said of Return to Forever, “everything they did was just gorgeous.”Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images MORAN Oh, that’s great to hear, Christian. I heard him say that too. He didn’t think he really could. Of course Miles gave him the big compliment, and, and that made Chick just fly — it was his first gig with Miles, no rehearsal, no charts. Chick was getting a drink by the bar because he thought he didn’t do so good. And then Miles whispers in his ear. I can’t say the word Miles used … But Chick went, Oh my goodness. He was dancing around.How did Chick influence your approach to music?BLADES He was playing at the Blue Note and I went over and said hello. So Chick asked if I would like to do something with him. I had no idea what I was going to do to fit in this thing. You know, he goes to Mars and he goes to Jupiter, a lot of places that I don’t know how to get to. And there are no directions. I had a great time when I was with him, always respectful. It was very hard for me to call Tito Puente “Tito,” you know what I mean? That’s the way he wanted to be called, he was Chick. I knew immediately he would not bat an eye if I would do “Pennies From Heaven” with a salsa band. Right away, he would go like, oh, that’s wonderful, you know?ROSNES He was so open, and his imagination just knew no bounds. He had a desire to cross all those lines, musically, and play anything. That definitely inspired me in so many ways, compositionally as well as just playing the piano and improvising. I know that when I write, I don’t really think about what genre I’m writing. I follow in his footsteps that way, in terms of just having the whole world at your fingertips. He was so focused all the time, too. One piece I’m excited about playing at the show is “Eternal Child” because I I’d heard it, but I never studied it. It’s such a beautiful composition.MORAN Oh my, he wrote that in the middle of the night, Renee, I remember in L.A. We were trying to sleep and he just said, “I hear something.” And he had to get out of bed and go down. And he said, when he wrote that down on the paper, by the piano, he was crying.Corea with his wife, Gayle Moran, in 2020.Chick Corea ProductionsROSNES Well, it’s beautiful. I kind of think of Chick himself as the eternal child. He has that spirit. He had an email address at one point, something with “eternal child” in it.BLADES When I recorded “Spanish Heart,” he sent me the lyric and I’m singing on top of what the chart was, but I did the thing in my tone, and he said: “Oh, that’s great. Let’s do that.” He felt a special attachment to that song. It was a tremendous honor for me to do it. He was someone who called, he talked to you, he would prod you. He was always keeping in touch. I don’t know how his heart was big enough to be able to keep up with all this stuff. I’m terrible at that. I love people, but I don’t tell them.MORAN You hear those lyrics and it sounds like a love song, and that’s what I thought it was. One time I said, “Oh sweetie, you wrote that for me.” And he said, “Well, yeah, but it’s for them.” And he meant the audience, a love song for the audience. That’s how it ends, he says “I give it all to you.” More

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      Chick Corea: Hear 12 Essential Performances

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPlaylistChick Corea: Hear 12 Essential PerformancesThe jazz pianist and innovator was at the forefront of the movement blending jazz and rock in the 1970s, and recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader.Whether on his own, leading the collective Return to Forever or accompanying giants like Miles Davis, Chick Corea helped enrich the lexicon of jazz.Credit…Chuck Fishman/Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2021, 2:23 p.m. ETChick Corea, the pioneering keyboardist and bandleader who died on Tuesday at 79, will be forever regarded as a crucial architect of jazz-rock fusion.It’s a fitting one-line tribute. Whether on his own, leading the collective Return to Forever or accompanying giants like Miles Davis (on landmark albums including “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew”), Corea helped enrich the lexicon of jazz — merging its harmonic language with the heaviness (and amplification) of rock and funk. But no description, even one this broad, can encompass a vision so limitless.“After all, formal styles are only an afterthought — an outgrowth of the creative impulse,” Corea told The New York Times in 1983. “Nobody sits down and decides to specifically write in a predetermined style. A style is not something you learn so much as something that you synthesize. Musicians don’t care if a given composition is jazz, pop or classical music. All they care about is whether it is good music — whether it is challenging and exciting.”For more than five decades, Corea modified his sound to follow that simple maxim — chasing whims from bebop to free jazz to fusion to contemporary classical. He recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader. And he always prioritized melody and musicality over empty-calorie showmanship (though few could rival his raw skill on the Fender Rhodes).Here are 12 of his elite studio and live performances.‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’ (1970)Corea and Joe Zawinul form a wall of Rhodes on this slinky, funky cut from Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew,” punctuated by John McLaughlin’s ice-pick guitars and Davis’s sighing trumpet. The rhythm section is so dense, it’s hard to savor it all: two electric basses (Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks), two drum sets (Don Alias and Jack DeJohnette) and the congas of Juma Santos. Good thing it lasts 14 minutes. The keyboardists shift from question marks to exclamation points — one moment prodding against the groove, the next soloing in colorful bursts of noise. “Trust yourself,” Corea said in 2020, was Davis’s philosophy. “When he says, ‘Play what you don’t hear,’ he means, trust your imagination. Trust yourself to say, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I’m just going to do it because it’s fun. Because I love it.’”‘Chris’ (1970)Corea splatters electric piano all across this nine-minute monster from the guitarist Larry Coryell’s “Spaces,” a pillar of early fusion. The arrangement seems to teeter between structure and improvisation, straight groove and cosmic freedom. The lineup is the definition of a supergroup: Corea and Coryell, plus John McLaughlin on guitar, Miroslav Vitouš (later of Weather Report) on double bass and Billy Cobham on drums.‘Spain’ (1973)The rare fusion tune with a shelf life as a jazz standard, “Spain” remains Corea’s signature composition — covered by artists as different as Stevie Wonder and Béla Fleck. The original, from Return to Forever’s “Light as a Feather,” is untouchable: Over nearly 10 minutes, the keyboardist’s hands joyfully pirouette across the Rhodes, his mellifluous melodies matched by Flora Purim’s tranquil coo and Joe Farrell’s fluttering flute. The chorus, with its clipped keyboard phrases and enthusiastic handclaps, ranks alongside Weather Report’s main “Birdland” theme as one of the catchiest moment in fusion history.‘Space Circus, Part I’/‘Space Circus, Part II’ (1973)In its infancy, Return to Forever already rivaled the intensity of most ’70s rock bands. But it sounded positively massive on its third album, adding two new recruits (the powerhouse drummer Lenny White and the guitarist Bill Connors) and letting Stanley Clarke switch to electric bass. The group showed its full dynamic range on this two-parter from Return to Forever’s “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,” opening with Corea’s dreamy Rhodes theme before erupting into tightly clenched funk. Connors’s bruising guitar and Clarke’s distorted bass drift into psych-rock territory — but even when the keyboardist lays back a bit, his steady chords remain the heartbeat of the ensemble.‘Song to John (Part I)’/‘Song to John (Part II)’ (1975)Corea’s acoustic piano slips into sumptuous New Age territory on the first half of these tracks from Stanley Clarke’s “Journey to Love,” trading fanfare with Clarke’s bowed bass and John McLaughlin’s acoustic guitar. The group nails down an intense Latin groove on the second half, with McLaughlin and Corea sparking fireworks. In the liner notes, Clarke dedicated the two-part piece to John Coltrane — and it lives up to the billing.‘Sorceress’ (1976)The definitive Return to Forever lineup — Corea, Clarke, White and the guitarist Al Di Meola — splintered after the 1976 album “Romantic Warrior.” But as this funky odyssey proves, they went out at a near peak. White is credited as composer here, and his fidgety drum groove certainly keeps the engine running. But “Sorceress” also finds Corea at perhaps his most versatile, keyboard-wise — weaving in atmospheric pads, squiggly synth leads and Latin themes on acoustic piano.‘Spanish Fantasy’ (1976)Corea was always influenced by Latin music, explaining “that flavor, I find, is mostly in everything I do,” to Billboard in 2019. “It’s a part of me. I don’t know how to differentiate it.” But he never plunged in more deeply than on his 10th solo LP, “My Spanish Heart.” The record peaks with this whiplash four-part suite, which sprawls from elegant string and brass sections to acoustic piano interludes to the tastiest jazz-rock rave-ups this side of Steely Dan’s “Aja.”‘Short Tales of the Black Forest’ (1976)Composed by Corea for his Forever bandmate Di Meola’s debut solo album, “Land of the Midnight Sun,” this mini-epic makes good use of its virtuoso flash — both players sound like they could drift away from their instruments into the sky. But there are plenty of graceful melodies packed into these five and a half minutes. Midway through, Corea slips into gentle chordal comping while Di Meola ascends and descends the scales. Corea even gets to showcase his marimba skills, adding extra drama to a climactic flourish.‘Homecoming’ (1979)Corea and Herbie Hancock, two of fusion’s elite keyboardists, embarked on an acoustic duo tour in 1978, and the pair, both veterans of the Miles Davis bands, interlock to a startling degree on the two live LPs that emerged from those dates. One highlight is a 19-minute version of “Homecoming” from “CoreaHancock,” expertly merging their instruments into one organism. They move from beauty to ugliness on a dime — midway through, the piece morphs into a section of guttural grunting, percussive pounding and prepared piano madness.‘Rumble’ (1986)Like most fusion giants who survived into the mid-80s, Corea embraced the colors and contours of the time, forming his Elektric Band with the drummer Dave Weckl, the bassist John Patitucci and the alternating guitarists Scott Henderson and Carlos Rios. The rhythm section runs free on this neon-coated number from “The Chick Corea Elektric Band,” defined by its twisting, Zappa-like rhythms and Corea’s comically bright synthesizers.‘Spain (Live)’ (1992)Corea stretched out “Spain” like taffy over the decades, retaining his interest by reworking it for various settings and band configurations. (“By 1976 or so, I started to tire of the song,” he told The Atlantic in 2011. “I started playing really perverted versions of it — I’d refer to it just for a second, then I’d go off on an improvisation.”) One of his most stunning later-day renditions is this live acoustic duet from “Play” with the vocalist Bobby McFerrin, who breathes new life into the piece with his divine falsetto, rumbling bass lines and body percussion. For all the sublime technique, the biggest revelation is hearing these two giants lock into perfect symmetry on the main theme.‘Crystal Silence’ (2008)Corea re-teamed with the vibraphonist Gary Burton for the Grammy-winning, double-disc live LP “The New Crystal Silence,” built largely on reworked pieces from Corea’s back catalog. The duo had collaborated on and off for decades, and the music here feels appropriately natural and lived-in — even full-blown Zen, like on the expanded take on “Crystal Silence.” Captured in crisp, studio-level fidelity, Corea and Burton trade phrases and counterpoint patterns, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra rounding out that breezy conversation.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79When jazz and rock fused in the 1970s, he was at the forefront of the movement. But he never abandoned his love of the acoustic piano.The pianist, composer and bandleader Chick Corea at the Blue Note in Manhattan in 2012. In his long career, he recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader and won 23 Grammys.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesFeb. 11, 2021Chick Corea, an architect of the jazz-rock fusion boom of the 1970s who spent more than a half century as one of the foremost pianists in jazz, died on Tuesday at his home in Tampa, Fla. He was 79.The cause was cancer, said Dan Muse, a spokesman for Mr. Corea’s family.Mr. Corea’s best-known band was Return to Forever, a collective with a rotating membership that nudged the genre of fusion into greater contact with Brazilian, Spanish and other global influences. It also provided Mr. Corea with a palette on which to experiment with a growing arsenal of new technologies.But throughout his career he never abandoned his first love, the acoustic piano, on which his punctilious touch and crisp sense of harmony made his playing immediately distinctive.Mr. Corea in 2006 at the Blue Note, where his performances often combined reunions with longtime associates and collaborations with younger accompanists.Credit…Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesA number of his compositions, including “Spain,” “500 Miles High” and “Tones for Joan’s Bones,” have become jazz standards, marked by his dreamy but brightly illuminated harmonies and ear-grabbing melodies.By the late 1960s, Mr. Corea, still in his 20s, had already established himself as a force to be reckoned with. He gigged and recorded with some of the leading names in straight-ahead and Latin jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Mongo Santamaria and Sarah Vaughan. His first two albums as a leader, “Tones for Joan’s Bones” (1966) and “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” (1968), earned rave reviews. Both are now thought of as classics.But it was playing in Miles Davis’s ensembles that set Mr. Corea on the path that would most define his role in jazz. He played the electric piano on Davis’s “In a Silent Way” (1969) and “Bitches Brew” (1970), the albums that sounded the opening bell for the fusion era.From left, Dave Holland, Miles Davis and Mr. Corea in 1969. Mr. Corea played electric piano in Davis’s band and on the Davis albums widely considered to have sounded the opening bell for the fusion era.Credit…Tad Hershorn/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesSoon after leaving Davis’s group, he helped found Return to Forever, and he spent much of the 1970s touring and recording with the band, which became one of the most popular instrumental ensembles of its era.Reviewing a performance at the Blue Note in New York in 2006, the critic Nate Chinen, writing in The New York Times, recalled the innovative sound that Mr. Corea had honed with Return to Forever three decades before: “His Fender Rhodes piano chimed and chirruped over Latin American rhythms; female vocals commingled with the soothing flutter of a flute. Then the ensemble muscled up and morphed into a hyperactive fusion band, establishing pop-chart presence and a fan base to match. To the extent that there is a Return to Forever legacy, it encompasses both these dynamic extremes, each a facet of Mr. Corea’s personality.”By the time of that Blue Note show, Mr. Corea’s career was entering a chapter of happy reminiscence, full of reunion concerts and retrospective projects. But he continued to build out from the groundwork he had laid.In 2013, for instance, he released two albums introducing new bands: “The Vigil,” featuring an electrified quintet of younger musicians, and “Trilogy,” an acoustic-trio album on which he was joined by the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Brian Blade.Return to Forever, one of the most popular instrumental ensembles of its era, in 1976. From left: Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola and Mr. Corea.Credit…Dick Barnatt/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHe kept up a busy touring schedule well into his late 70s, and his performances at the Blue Note in particular often combined reunions with longtime associates and collaborations with younger accompanists, mixing nostalgia with a will to forge ahead. Those performances often found their way onto albums, including “The Musician” (2017), a three-disc collection drawn from his nearly two-month-long residency at the club in 2011, when he was celebrating his 70th birthday in the company of such fellow luminaries as the pianist Herbie Hancock, the bassist and Return to Forever co-founder Stanley Clarke and the vocalist Bobby McFerrin.By the end of his career Mr. Corea had recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader and raked in 23 Grammys, more than almost any other musician. He also won three Latin Grammys.In 2006 he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the highest honor available to an American jazz musician.Though he had become symbolic of the fusion movement, Mr. Corea never put much stock in musical categories. “It’s the media that are so interested in categorizing music,” he told The Times in 1983, “the media and the businessmen, who, after all, have a vested interest in keeping marketing clear cut and separate. If critics would ask musicians their views about what is happening, you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts taking place. All this means is a continual development — a continual merging of different streams.”Mr. Corea’s first marriage ended in divorce. He met Gayle Moran, who became his second wife, in the 1970s, when he was in Return to Forever and she was a singer and keyboardist with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, another top-flight fusion band.She survives him, as do a son, Thaddeus Corea; a daughter, Liana Corea; and two grandchildren.In the early 1970s, Mr. Corea converted to Scientology, and the religion’s teachings informed much of his music from then on, including his work with Return to Forever.Mr. Corea in 1978. “If critics would ask musicians their views about what is happening,” he once said, “you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts taking place.” Credit…Chuck FishmanArmando Anthony Corea was born on June 12, 1941, in Chelsea, Mass., near Boston. His father, also named Armando Corea, was a trumpeter and bandleader in Boston, and his mother, Anna (Zaccone) Corea, was a homemaker. He began studying piano when he was 4.He picked up his nickname from an aunt, who often pinched his big cheeks and called him “cheeky.” The name eventually morphed into the pithier “Chick.”He moved to New York City to study at Columbia University and Juilliard, but that lasted only a few months. As Miles Davis had a generation before, when he arrived at Juilliard from East St. Louis, Ill., Mr. Corea quickly found himself lured out of the classroom and into the clubs. Some of his earliest gigs came in the bands of the famed Latin jazz percussionists Mongo Santamaría and Willie Bobo, as well as with the swing-era vocalist and bandleader Cab Calloway.In 1968 he assumed the piano chair in Davis’s influential quintet, replacing Mr. Hancock. The band quickly went into the studio to record the final tracks that would round out “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” Davis’s first album to feature an electric piano. It signaled the trumpeter’s growing embrace of rock and funk music, a move encouraged by his second wife, the vocalist Betty Davis. (One of the two tracks featuring Mr. Corea is a tribute to her, the 16 ½-minute “Mademoiselle Mabry.”)The group gradually expanded in size as Davis wandered deeper into the murky, wriggling sound world of his early fusion albums. He brought a version of the “Bitches Brew” band to the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, the largest gig of his career, before an audience of 600,000.Soon after playing that concert, Mr. Corea and the bassist Dave Holland left Davis’s ensemble and joined with the drummer Barry Altschul and the saxophonist Anthony Braxton to found Circle, a short-lived but influential group that embraced an avant-garde approach.Mr. Corea founded Return to Forever in 1971 with Mr. Clarke, the saxophonist and flutist Joe Farrell, the percussionist Airto Moreira and the vocalist Flora Purim. The following year, the band released its Brazilian-tinged debut album, titled simply “Return to Forever,” on the ECM label.Also in 1972, Mr. Corea teamed up for the first time with the vibraphonist Gary Burton to record another album for the same label, “Crystal Silence.” The two became longtime friends and collaborators. Taken together, the two ECM albums represented something close to the full breadth of Mr. Corea’s identity as a musician — ranging from the serene and meditative to the zesty and driving.“We made that record in three hours; every song but one was a first take,” Mr. Burton said in an interview, recalling the “Crystal Silence” sessions. They would go on to record seven duet albums, and they continued performing together until Mr. Burton’s recent retirement.“I kept thinking, ‘Surely it’s going to run out of steam here at some point,’” Mr. Burton said. “And it never did. Even at the end, we would still come offstage excited and thrilled by what we were doing.”Return to Forever changed personnel frequently, but its most enduring lineup featured Mr. Corea, Mr. Clarke, the guitarist Al Di Meola and the drummer Lenny White. That quartet iteration released a string of popular albums — “Where Have I Known You Before” (1974), “No Mystery” (1975) and “Romantic Warrior” (1976) — that leaned into a blazing, hard-rock-influenced style, and each reached the Top 40 on the Billboard albums chart.Mr. Corea released a number of other influential fusion albums on his own, including “My Spanish Heart” (1976) and a string of recordings with his Elektric Band and his Akoustic Band. Later in his career he also delved deeply into the Western classical tradition, recording works by canonical composers like Mozart and Chopin, and composing an entire concerto for classical orchestra.“His versatility is second to none when it comes to the jazz world,” Mr. Burton said. “He played in so many styles and settings and collaborations.”In 1997, delivering a commencement address at Berklee College of Music, Mr. Corea told the members of the graduating class to insist on blazing their own path. “It’s all right to be yourself,” he said. “In fact, the more yourself you are, the more money you make.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More