When the pioneering pianist Chick Corea died unexpectedly last February, at the age of 79, he left a legacy of experimenting, preserving and expanding the jazz tradition. For more than half a century, he deftly navigated the constantly shifting boundaries of music. Corea began his career with Afro-Cuban percussionist Willie Bobo and spent time with bossa nova fan Stan Getz. His presence in Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” ensemble, and later, his starring role in Return to Forever gave him a seminal role in the origins of 1970s jazz fusion.
But Corea didn’t stop there and devoted herself to straightforward jazz trios and quartets; duos with greats like Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett; out-of-the-box collaborations with bluegrass banjo player Béla Fleck; and even playing Mozart concertos with Bobby McFerrin. His long stay with the Elektric Band showed that he never left fusion, and his 2019 release, “Antidote”, recorded with an array of Spanish and Latin American musicians, rekindled 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, an all-star lineup of musicians who either played with or were deeply influenced by Corea will gather at Lincoln Center for concerts that reinvent his classical compositions.
“Chick had this way of teaching us that if someone is trying to define what jazz is or isn’t to you, you don’t have to accept it,” bassist John Patitucci, a longtime member of the Elektric Band and musical director of the shows, said in a telephone interview. “He was extremely affirmative with all of us, and he was funny — hysterically funny.”
The shows will be more than just a tribute; they will enable 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 stood by his side to the very end – discussed how deeply he connected with his collaborators at making music and the ways in which he personally touched them. (Only except Fleck will attend the Lincoln Center event, which was postponed to January.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did Corea’s experiments with jazz fusion and eclecticism inspire you?
CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE I think there’s an accepted story like, there was quote unquot, “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 have missed all these great albums Chick made in addition to his Return to Forever albums, which were also great. Every time you had a group with people like Bill Connors and Al Di Meola, that was the highlight 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 crystal clear, everything they did was just beautiful.
RENEE ROSNES His fusion playing – playing electrically, whatever you want to call it – was as harmonically and rhythmically complex as all the music he wrote. It wasn’t that anything was muted. 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 fearless. He didn’t seem to really care what anyone thought, what the critics thought, he would just go ahead and make the music he wanted to make.
BELA FLECK It was just 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, I don’t think I’d be doing anything I do if it wasn’t for that band. In 1975 I saw them at the Beacon Theater and I wouldn’t have tried to play the banjo the way I play. I wouldn’t have had the Flecktones. Fusion almost got a bad name or something, but if you go back to the original stuff, this music had a lot of intelligence. It wasn’t just rock with jazz. It was his own thing. It really was a fusion.
RUBEN KNIVES Chick was always curious, and I think that’s the real definition of an intellectual, an artist who is constantly curious. He worked with many different people and showed them paths that may not have been clear to them at the time, no matter how successful they were. The opportunities he created for music to move forward are impossible to consider as a whole. He was just an incredibly curious and talented man.
Corea was extremely thoughtful in the way he worked with musicians, his sense of generosity and mentorship. Can you talk about that?
FLECK He had something about giving everyone permission to do what they should do, or what they should do, which is to be themselves. One of the first times he came to play with me at the Flecktones in Nashville, we did an interview and the idea of rules came into the music and he said something like, “Well, there are no rules. If there is anyone who thinks there are rules, I hereby give you permission to ignore them.” When we were at the airports, you stood in line and there were these barriers, and he would always walk around and take them out so people wouldn’t have to queue anymore.
MCBRIDE I was lucky enough to play a lot of Chick with Roy Haynes. Even though it was Chick’s band, he always put the power in Roy. We went out with the Remembering Bud Powell Quintet in the summer of 1996, and I remember after we rehearsed each arrangement, Chick said something like, “Roy, is that cool?” You know, “Is that the right vibe?” And that made me love Chick even more because even though it was his band, he checked with Roy Haynes to make sure everything was okay.
FLECK Since I play with different kinds of people, I get the question, “How do you play all these things?” And I say, ‘I really don’t. I play the way I am all the time, and it’s the people around me that change.” He was just like him, everything he did had the stamp. I mean, is there anything from Chick Corea that you could hear that you wouldn’t know In three or four notes he was. So he just had this language.
MCBRIDE Even with the Foo Fighters.
ROSNES Or even all the way back to the beginning, you know, the beginning of when he played with Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader – I mean, he still sounded like himself back then.
GAYLE MORAN He really wanted to be a better classic player, and he was working on it. He practiced Mozart over and over. He said to me more than once, “If I could practice 24 hours a day, maybe one day I’d be a pretty good pianist.” He says that to me [laughs]Yes!
What things did Chick share about his influences and the musicians he played with?
MORAN I organized this little family concert because the doctor told me it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t tell anyone that news – we were celebrating our anniversary coming up. We all started with ‘All Blues’, Miles’ famous song, and it was really beautiful. And he raised his hand very carefully and said, “That’s so beautiful. Now I want to show you the original arrangement that Miles taught me.” And he took his time and energy to teach everyone – When will the melody come? When is the piano coming? His eyes lit up when he was talking, and we played it and he gave everyone a thumbs up and, and we’d have another concert the next night. He wasn’t strong enough. And then he had this next adventure.
MCBRIDE Chick loved Horace Silver and I don’t think many people draw that line between Horace and Chick. He would talk so much about Horace and how much he influenced the structure of his writing. He told me the story about when he first joined the Blue Mitchell-Junior Cook Quintet, which was basically the old Horace Silver Band, and he said, man, I always feel like the one thing I’ve never been that good at was in was playing the blues. I was like, Chick, I’m going to blindfold you, and I played a recording of him playing with Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook. And I said, this cat looks a lot like Wynton Kelly. And he’s like, yeah, that’s swinging. And then, like after about eight bars, he went, wait a minute — and I said, yes, you can play the blues very well. You funky as hell, Chick!
MORAN That’s good 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 Chick just made it fly – it was his first performance with Miles, no rehearsal, no charts. Chick went for a drink at the bar because he thought he wasn’t doing too well. And then Miles whispers in his ear. I can’t say the word Miles used… But Chick went, oh my god. He danced around.
How has Chick influenced your approach to music?
KNIVES He was playing at the Blue Note and I went up to him and said hello. So Chick asked if I wanted to do something with him. I had no idea what to do to fit into this thing. You know, he goes to Mars and he goes to Jupiter, a lot of places I don’t know how to get to. And there are no clues. I had a great time when I was with him, always respectful. I found it very difficult to call Tito Puente ‘Tito’, you know what I mean? That’s what he wanted to be called, he was Chick. I knew right away that he wouldn’t sleep a wink if I did “Pennies From Heaven” with a salsa band. Right away he’d be like, oh, that’s great, you know?
ROSNES He was so open and his imagination knew no bounds. He had a desire to cross all those lines, musically, and play everything. That certainly inspired me in so many ways, both compositionally and just playing the piano and improvising. I know that when I write, I don’t really think about what genre I’m writing. I’m following in his footsteps that way, in terms of just having the whole world at my fingertips. He was also so focused all the time. One piece I’m excited to play on the show is “Eternal Child” because I’d heard it, but never studied it. It’s such a beautiful composition.
MORAN Oh dear, he wrote that in the middle of the night, Renee, I remember we were trying to sleep in LA and he just said, “I hear something.” And he had to get out of bed and go downstairs. And he said, when he wrote that on the paper, at the piano, he cried.
ROSNES Well, it’s beautiful. I see Chick as the eternal child myself. He has that spirit. At one point he had an email address, something with “eternal child” in it.
KNIVES When I recorded “Spanish Heart” he sent me the lyrics and I sing on top of what the chart was, but I did it on my tone and he said, “Oh, that’s great. Let’s do that.” He felt a special attachment to that song. It was a huge honor for me to do this. He was someone who called, he talked to you, he would poke you. He was always in touch. I don’t know how his heart was big enough to keep up with all these things 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 honey, you wrote that for me.” And he said, “Yes, 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.”