Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (1941–2021) was one of the defining jazz pianists of the era after John Coltrane, in the company of McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s he was present at the birth of jazz fusion, and in the 1970s he formed Return to Forever, whose blend of electric energy and Latin colour carried the music to a new audience. His compositions — Spain, 500 Miles High, La Fiesta, Armando's Rhumba, Windows — became standards, and through the following decades he moved freely between acoustic and electric groups, solo piano, duets, classical concertos and Spanish-flavoured projects, collaborating tirelessly. He won twenty-seven Grammy Awards from more than sixty nominations, a record for a jazz musician, and remained an active, curious performer to the end of his life. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on 12 June 1941. Leaving Davis in 1970 he formed Circle with Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton and Barry Altschul, a group that stood nearer European abstraction than the African-American roots of the music, and he left it a year later; Return to Forever followed in 1972 with Stanley Clarke, Joe Farrell, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, and took on a harder rock edge when the young guitarist Al Di Meola joined in 1974. The Enchantment, made with Béla Fleck, was presented in Bulgaria at the National Palace of Culture on 6 November 2007, and a rare cancer ended his life on 9 February 2021.