CHICK COREA Comes to New Jersey Performing Arts Center
By: A.A. Cristi
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New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) presents an evening of timeless jazz, pop standards and more with a master musician-composer: 22-time GRAMMY Award winner and NEA Jazz Master Chick Corea.
Throughout his career, Chick Corea has been at the very forefront of jazz and fusion, an innovator who has forged new ground with his acoustic jazz bands, his electric units (like Return to Forever and the Chick Corea Elektric Band), and as both a solo artist and collaborator. Many of his compositions - "Spain," "500 Miles High," "La Fiesta" and "Windows," to name a few - have become classics of contemporary jazz. >From straight-ahead to avant-garde, bebop to jazz-rock fusion, children's songs to chamber and symphonic works, Corea has touched an astonishing number of musical bases since launching his career playing with the genre-shattering bands of MiLes Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. An NEA Jazz Master and a DownBeat Hall of Famer, Corea has earned 63 GRAMMY nominations and a staggering 22 wins, most recently for Trilogy, his 2015 collaboration with Christian McBride and Brian Blade. Additionally, Corea has picked up three Latin GRAMMY Awards and was named "Artist of the Year" on three separate occasions in the DownBeat Readers Poll. "Chick Corea is a luminary, ebullient and eternally youthful," says The New York Times. The BBC classifies him as "a venerated maestro," while Jazzwise Magazine says that he plays with "gale force intensity, gloriously impassioned." New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), located in downtown Newark, N.J., has the most diverse programming and audience of any performing arts center in the country, and is the artistic, cultural, educational and civic center of New Jersey - where Great Performances and events enhance and transform lives every day. NJPAC brings diverse communities together, providing access to all and showcasing the state's and the world's best artists while acting as a leading catalyst in the revitalization of its home city. Through its extensive Arts Education programs, NJPAC is shaping the next generation of artists and arts enthusiasts. NJPAC has attracted more than 8 million visitors (including over 1.6 million children) since opening its doors in 1997, and nurtures meaningful and lasting relationships with each of its constituents.