Music makes us better

Almost all gifted musicians started playing their instruments at a very young age and Armando Anthony Chick Korea was no exception. Born on June 12, 1941 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in an environment of Italian origin favorable to beautiful sounds (the father was a trumpeter, double bass player and composer), little Chick was already taking piano lessons at the age of four. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker played on the record player at home, but also Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and the dearest Italian opera. Throughout his intense discography and eclectic career, in which he garnered more than 20 international accolades in addition to more than 20 Grammy Awards, there was a pianist who marked him with fire and to which Korea seemed to return again and again: Bud Powell. Perhaps one of his best albums is precisely Remembering Bud Powell (1997), produced by Korea itself for Stretch Records, recorded at Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeles and in the company of true jazz monsters: Roy Haynes, Kenny Garrett, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman and Wallace Roney. No Chick theme, who this time left his compositional skills to be inspired solely by those of one of the essential founders of be bop. Pianists travel, listen, taste, and always return to Mr. Powell.