Chick Corea

Along with contemporaries like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea helped bring jazz from the mid-century into its present state. Corea, whose real name is Armando Anthony Corea, was born in 1941 in Massachusetts. His father was a Dixieland-style jazz trumpet player, so Corea grew up surrounded by the jazz standards of the 1930s and 1940s. Corea studied piano and started playing jazz gigs while still in high school. After briefly studying music at Columbia University and the Julliard School, Corea stayed on in New York to develop his career. His first big gig was playing with Cab Calloway. In the 1970s, Corea collaborated with other innovators to explore avant-garde jazz, and was also the pianist with Miles Davis’s band for the albums Files de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, and Bitches Brew. Corea’s style evolved again as he worked in a jazz fusion style with Latin jazz influences. An outspoken Scientologist, Corea credits the religion for influencing his music. From 1973 to present, Corea has been nominated for fifty-nine Grammy Awards and has won twenty.