# Chick Corea: Final Curtain Call: Video, Photo

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/09/05/chick-corea-final-curtain-call-video-photo/
- Published: 2021-09-05T23:10:48+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**At the time of this writing, it’s been a little over three months since an immortal
inconceivably departed this world, one of so many bright lights in the jazz world
that have blinked off in the past few years.**

Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea seemed to be able to live forever, because he seemed
to have been with us forever — not as a treasured-but-ancient relic from a bygone
era, but as a vibrant, ageless contemporary who continued to perform, show after
show, for adoring audiences, recording album after album of interesting and varied
projects with the world’s greatest musicians of all time and of all genres.

Such a true historical giant can never truly be gone, certainly not in the immediate
aftermath of his absence, which is why it was probably a foregone conclusion that
Corea would once again top the DownBeat Critics Poll. In his swan song reappearance,
he has triumphed in style, winning a triple-crown as the Pianist, Keyboardist and,
ever so deservedly, Artist of the Year. DownBeat’s critics undoubtedly would have
also voted Corea to the Hall of Fame if the readers hadn’t already done so back 
in 2010.

Consider it one last curtain call for the jazz grandmaster, who has won 23 Grammys,
was knighted as an NEA Jazz Master and received the BBC Lifetime Achievement Award.
But in retrospect, Corea might have been doing curtain calls under our noses for
some time now, perhaps in a prescient understanding of the surprising swiftness 
with which a conclusion to a life even as well-lived as his could occur.

One would be forgiven for losing track of Corea’s most recent additions to his discography.
He surely made himself a hard act to follow from the very first albums under his
own name. If, in a terrible alternate reality, Corea had tragically passed away 
in 1980, all that he had done up to that point would have still earned him the honor
of being one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. Thankfully, we can joyfully
disseminate the full, immense output Corea has created for the ages. (For an excellent
summation of Corea’s discography, see DownBeat’s April 2021 issue.)

A quick overview of the albums Corea recorded in the last decade of his life reveals
what one might call a fresh retrospective. _The Mothership Returns_ (2011) highlights
a reunion tour with the vaunted Return to Forever rhythm section of Corea, Stanley
Clarke and Lenny White. _Hot House_ (2012) saw a sublime studio reunion with vibraphonist
Gary Burton. The Grammy-winning _Trilogy_ (2013) brought new life to the piano trio
setting Corea returned to time and again, this time in the form of Brian Blade and
Christian McBride.

That same year, _The Vigil_ (2013) allowed Corea to flex his still-well-defined 
fusion muscles alongside of a group of impressive young men less than half his age.
_Solo Piano: Portraits_ (2014) is a two-hour snapshot of Corea in one of his most
comfortable places: sandwiched between an enraptured audience and a Yamaha concert
grand. “Welcome to my living room,” he announces before diving into the music.

Try to find a musical setting on this earth where Chick Corea wouldn’t seem completely
at home. The number of fascinating one-on-one musical conversations he had with 
one brilliant artist after another are too many to count, and he added Béla Fleck
to that list with _Two_ (2015), a delightfully unusual fusion of jazz and bluegrass.

Corea turned 75 in 2016. He did not release any albums that year, but instead celebrated
his birthday with a three-week residency at the Blue Note in New York, where he 
invited friends to partake in the merry music-making. The festivities were captured
in a documentary video, as well as the triple-CD album _The Musician _(2017). 2017
was also the year of _Chinese Butterfly_, featuring a band co-led by Corea and longtime
friend and drummer Steve Gadd. Recorded in 2018, _Trilogy 2_ (2019) is an encore
live performance by Corea, Blade and McBride, in which they pay homage to the great
original trio of Corea, Roy Haynes and Miroslav Vitous with a new rendition of “
Now He Sings, Now He Sobs.”

_Antidote_ (2019) is the rub on an important touchstone for the grandson of a Italian
immigrant who nevertheless claimed to have a “Spanish Heart.” Corea’s love for Latin-
American music first manifested itself in the early Airto Moreira/Flora Purim incarnation
of Return to Forever, from which we get the first version of perhaps his most beloved
composition, “Spain.” Those sentiments are later flushed out more explicitly with
_My Spanish Heart_ (1976) and _Touchstone_ (1992). _Antidote_ is a final injection
of those things, imbibed with more of an Afro-Cuban variant.

Corea’s final album is simply, and fittingly, _Plays_ (2020). It’s a true curtain
call, where he reminisces and performs many of his favorite pieces, ending with 
a final retelling from his canonical _Children’s Songs_ suite. Before playing them,
he reminds the audience that they were “in the spirit of kids, that are free, that
are open, and that always give us a lot of joy.” To see this wise wizard near the
end of his life utter these words as he continued to embody what they have meant
to him should be of comfort to those of us seeking what he managed to find. May 
everything old be new again, as may we all one day return to forever.

![Image](https://i0.wp.com/downbeat.com/images/news/_full/DB21_08_P018-023_Chick_Corea_Artist_of_the_Year_sussman_BlueNote_NYC__5_Piece_band_DSC7772_lo_res.
jpg?resize=640%2C457&ssl=1)

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