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Chick Corea with Eddie Gomez and Brian Blade

Touring last year with keyboardist Chick Corea, banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck reported he felt a little intimidated playing with the jazz icon.

“I’m always on the very edge of my seat trying to hang in there,” Fleck told Canada’s The Globe and Mail. “I’m facing my doubts about whether I can really play jazz or not, so playing with one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time is certainly a good way to test that.”

“Bela and I have known each other for 20 years or more,” says Corea. “It’s always a pleasure when we get together to play. It seems when we finish one tour, we start thinking about the next one.”

Since his formative days, Corea has routinely dazzled his peers.

“Even at an early age, Chick’s ideas seemed to be original,” fellow keyboard legend Herbie Hancock told the Detroit Free Press. “And Chick really swung. There was kind of a lightness to it, like he was sprinkling magic dust on something.”

“I learn so much playing with Herbie,” says Corea, who toured with Hancock last year. “Long ago, Herbie and I recognized that the thing that made our duet work was our ability to receive the other’s ideas and always make something with them. It’s easy to do with Herbie since I love everything he creates.”

Acclaimed as a jazz master by the National Endowment of the Arts, over the course of an illustrious, five-decade career this extraordinary musician has performed in numerous settings across a broad range of musical styles, winning more than 20 Grammy Awards.

After playing a concert on Maui on Sunday, Corea will celebrate his 75th birthday by embarking on an extraordinary, two-month-long career retrospective at Manhattan’s Blue Note Jazz Club, featuring 15 legendary bands comprising 60 leading musical friends.

Among the many highlights, he will front a reconstituted version of his celebrated band Return to Forever and present a tribute to Miles Davis with fellow Davis alumni bassist Marcus Miller and saxophonist Kenny Garrett (and drummer Brian Blade, who will join him on Maui).

“It’s going to be a blast shifting formats of bands from duets to the 11-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra,” Corea enthuses. “It’s a perfect way to celebrate my 75th birthday year.”

The Blue Note celebration will also include a fusion powerhouse with legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra founder John McLaughlin. A few years back, Corea formed the Grammy-winning Five Peace Band with the guitarist.

“John’s going to be joining me the last week of the Blue Note residency,” he notes. “We’re going to be playing music from Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra repertoires. That’s going to be challenging. I have to practice his music.”

Born Armando Anthony Corea to a jazz trumpet-playing father, the keyboardist was destined to become a jazz musician.

“I owe so much to my father, Armando, and my mother, Anna, for starting me out with such care and love,” Corea explains. “I came from a musical household and I was always surrounded with it. I recall being part of late-night dinners in our kitchen with my father’s band and my mother cooking up a storm. The musical life permeated throughout my childhood.”

At an early age, besides a love for jazz, he developed a deep appreciation for Latin music that would influence his playing and composing throughout his career.

“I was fortunate to work with Phil Barboza’s Latin Dance Band when I was in high school in Chelsea, Mass.,” he continues. “Bill Fitch was playing conga with the band and he introduced me to Afro-Cuban music. The fantastic rhythms, with people on the dance floor in enthusiasm, were such a refreshing change to the relative seriousness of jazz.”

Over the years, Corea would play with an astounding array of jazz greats from Sarah Vaughan and Stan Getz, to Dizzy Gillespie and Davis, playing on such influential albums as “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew.”

“Looking back, there was just a lot of change and exciting experiments with music,” he recalls. “Miles encouraged and set the pace for this kind of experimentation. Miles never pandered to the status quo, he never waited for or asked for approval concerning what music to make. His artistic integrity was always fully intact. This was the biggest lesson I learned from him, not only playing with him and being around him, but by the whole legacy of great music he’s left us.”

Brilliant on both acoustic piano and a range of electric keyboards, Corea switched to electric at Davis’ suggestion.

“I made the best of it, but felt as though I was at a disadvantage because the quality of instrument was not really that of an acoustic instrument,” he recalls. “It was kind of a toy, sort of. So I started to try to get a sound out of it, fooling around with attachments that distorted the sound. Later when I formed the first Return to Forever group, I chose the Rhodes as my sound rather than piano. Then with the second Return to Forever band, I began exploring synthesizers, which were all new to me at that time. I found I could use some of the different sounds to enable the band to sound more orchestral.”

In recent years, he’s been drawn to composing contemporary classical works. For the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 2006, Corea composed his Piano Concerto No. 2, which he first performed with the Vienna State Opera.

“I enjoy working with an orchestra and have studied and revere some of the great orchestral works of Bartok, Stravinsky, Mozart and many others,” he says. “There is a thrill in working with that gorgeous sound and the joy of musicians all flowing together on stage.”

Then in 2012, he released the marvelous double disc “The Continents,” where he worked with an orchestra to conceptualize Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Asia, Australia and Europe.

“I wanted to do something in the spirit of Mozart,” he explains. “It’s where jazz, Latin and classical meet and I really like the idea of jazz quintet with a chamber orchestra. It was one of those projects that I had dreamed of doing.”

Looking to the future, he reports: “I plan to tour next year with the Elektric Band and also do a new project with my old friend (drummer) Steve Gadd. So there’s going to be some (record) releases from both those projects, and I’ve been working on an electronica project at my home studio. All these are very exciting for me.”

For his Maui concert, Corea will perform as a trio for the first time with acclaimed bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Blade.

A legendary bassist and two-time Grammy award winner, Gomez has been on the cutting edge of jazz music for more than four decades.

His impressive resume includes performances with jazz giants such as Davis, Gillespie, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Benny Goodman. His recordings with Corea range from “The Leprechaun” and “The Mad Hatter” to “Further Explorations” in 2012.

Growing up in New Orleans, Blade distilled the unique drumming styles and musical heritage of this cultural nexus. From albums and tours with Joshua Redman and Wayne Shorter to recordings with Bob Dylan (“Time Out Of Mind”), Emmylou Harris (“Wrecking Ball”), and Joni Mitchell (“Taming the Tiger,” “Shine”), Blade most recently recorded with Corea on the Grammy Award-winning “Trilogy” album in 2013.

“I look forward to being in Hawaii very soon,” he says. “I don’t get to the islands that often, so it’s a treat to be able to come and perform there.”

***

As part of the Festivals of Aloha, the 15th annual Richard Ho’opi’i Leo Ki’eki’e Falsetto Contest will be held at the King Kamehameha Golf Course Clubhouse on Friday evening.

The contest was created by Hawaiian music legend Richard Ho’opi’i to ensure the falsetto tradition is kept alive. Uncle Richard will be joined at the event by last year’s champion, Kamalei Kawa’a, who charmed judges with his rendition of “Pua Ahihi.”

* Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the contest will begin at 6. Tickets are $20. For more information, visit www.festivalsofaloha.com.

***

Slack-key guitar virtuoso Makana will present a solo concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

Featured on three Grammy-nominated albums, including the soundtrack of “The Descendants,” Makana has been on the Mainland opening for Joe Walsh and Bad Company’s “One Hell of a Night” tour. Earlier in the year he released the video “Fire is Ours,” supporting Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Now he has two new albums out, “Music You Heard Tonight” and “Slack Rock,” which includes covers of Sting’s “Fragile,” Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” and Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”

* Tickets are $20, $30, and $45 (plus applicable fees) and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or online at www.mauiarts.org.

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