FEATURE: NPR Music Celebrates Chick Corea’s 75th Birthday!

 At 75, Chick Corea Still Has That Magic Touch

Tom Vitale for NPR –

Jazz pianist Chick Corea is celebrating his 75th birthday this year with a marathon of live performances. He was on the road all summer and has finally settled into an eight-week run at the Blue Note Club in Greenwich Village in New York. The birthday bash features 15 different bands, playing music from every phase of Corea’s long career.

Corea walks one day through the door of the Blue Note on West 3rd Street, greets the staff and walks past the Yamaha grand piano on the stage to the drum set, where he begins to play. He learned to play drums when he was 8, four years after he started playing piano. Back at the keyboard, he says he thinks of his fingers as drumsticks or mallets.

“I think of the piano like that,” Corea says. “Like a great big marimba. Or a percussion instrument. There’s so many possibilities of putting it together when you’ve got 10 mallets and 88 drums.”

Corea’s touch on the piano is what sets him apart, says New York Times music critic Nate Chinen. “It’s almost like his fingers bounce off the keys,” Chinen says.

(11/15/16)

Read the rest of the article at NPR Music

Chick Corea on TKA