Chick Corea has attained iconic status in music. The keyboardist, composer and bandleader was a
DownBeat Hall of Famer and NEA Jazz Master, as well as one of the most nominated artists in
Grammy Awards history with 71 nods – and 27 wins, in addition to 4 Latin Grammys. From
straight-ahead to avant-garde, bebop to jazz-rock fusion, children’s songs to chamber and
symphonic works, Chick touched an astonishing number of musical bases in his career since
playing with the genre-shattering bands of Miles Davis in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Yet Chick had never been more productive than in the 21st century, whether playing acoustic
piano or electric keyboards, leading multiple bands, performing solo or collaborating with a
who’s who of music. Underscoring this, he had been named Artist of the Year three times this
decade in the DownBeat Readers Poll. Born in 1941 in Massachusetts, Chick was a tireless
creative spirit, continually reinventing himself through his art. As The New York Times has said,
he was “a luminary, ebullient and eternally youthful.”