Chick Corea: A Work in Progress
Image from A Work in Progress… On Being a Musician: Volume 1, Revised by Chick Corea, used under Fair Use: Commentary.
A Work in Progress… On Being a Musician: Volume 1, Revised
by Chick Corea
Published in 2019 by Chick Corea Productions, Inc.
Oversize paperback, 8½” by 11″, 64 pages, illustrated, no ISBN, no list price.
A Work in Progress is a fitting title for a book with a scant 40 pages of actual text. The pages are oversized at 8½” x 11″, but the type is also oversized, with generous margins and ample line spacing. It almost looks like a children’s book or a book of poetry.
A Work in Progress is closer to a work of poetry. Pianist, composer, and bandleader Chick Corea shares pearls of wisdom polished over decades of performance and groomed through rounds of revision from 1988 to 2019. Corea amassed an amazing 27 Grammy Awards before his death in 2021 at the age of 79.
One of the ways Corea grows a composition is by listening back to recordings of his own playing and fixing the timing on phrases as a piece takes shape. A Work in Progress could similarly be seen as a suite with generous space, graceful transitions, and highly-refined motifs imparting the wisdom of a recognized jazz master.
Corea lists 19 “personal policies” as a musician. Roughly half of them can be summed up as, “Don’t take crap from anybody.” A sample:
Don’t stop.
Don’t compromise.
The audience can respond or not.
To each his own.
The first half of Corea’s list is all tenacity, and the second half is about honesty, ethics, and supporting those who supported you.
A Work in Progress contains a pianist’s view of learning the piano, performing, and composing. Corea highly recommends watching other pianists play, as opposed to listening, studying scores, or reading biographies. He writes about seeing his fingers as drumsticks, and provides sheet music for a riff called “10 Drumsticks.” Corea writes, “I’ve found good control of rhythm to be the single most important element in making good music.”
Corea laments all the time he wasted fighting with bad pianos. He learned to “have a friendly attitude toward [the piano] and try to utilize its best qualities.” When accompanying a soloist, Corea recommends, “leaving big spaces when [the soloist] is making expressive phrases.” He refers to composing as a “musical game,” one Corea finds difficult to play unless driven by the pressure of an upcoming performance or recording.
A final thought on the calligraphic illustrations throughout the short book. I assume they are by Chick Corea, although no credit is given and they are unsigned. After wandering around with A Work in Progress for a couple weeks, I came to see the illustrations as integral to the text. They imply the same lessons in an elegant form.
I recommend A Work in Progress for collectors who are interested in piano instruction or in Chick Corea, or both. For the general public, the book is not an autobiography and lacks any of the usual elements of musical biography one might expect, such as memories of gigs or band members, or even a timeline of Corea’s amazing accomplishments as one of the greatest pianists in the history of jazz.
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