www.masseyhall.com

Legendary American pianist/composer Chick Corea, known for his many brilliant collaborations, appears at Massey Hall on Wednesday, March 5 at 8pm in a rare "solo" acoustic piano performance. On performing solo, Corea says (referring to a tour of Portugal this past December): "Playing solo is relaxing to me as I usually don't prepare any written music. I take the few solo shows I do as an opportunity to not follow a set program and just improvise as I go - since there's no other player there to coordinate with. I tried some new Bill Evans compositions out. He's a wonderful composer as well as the piano innovator that he's well known to be. And I'm always interested in playing the Thelonious Monk songbook. And my 'Children's Songs' are fun to try to play differently each time." He last appeared at Massey Hall in October 2004 with his dynamic Electrik Band.

Considering the staggering volume of Chick Corea's recorded output over the past 40 years, it is no overstatement to call him one of the most prolific composers of the second half of the 20th century. From avant-garde to bebop, from children's songs to straight ahead, from hard-hitting fusion to heady forays into classical, Chick has touched an astonishing number of musical bases in his illustrious career while maintaining a standard of excellence that is simply uncanny. A restlessly creative spirit, he continues to explore and generate new material for a number of different vehicles, including his Elektric Band and his flamenco flavored Touchstone band. "When I was a young man I made it my primary policy to always keep myself interested and challenged with music," says the 13-time Grammy Award winning pianist-composer-bandleader. "I've managed to avoid falling into the habit of doing the same thing over and over again, and it's really proved to be a good thing for me. I don't care about the other things, I care that I'm having a lot of fun and creating. So I feel honored or lucky to be able to continue to do that and be able to make a living doing it." His latest recording is 2007's The Enchantment, with Béla Fleck.

A prodigiously talented keyboard player, Corea has mastered most genres of jazz piano and has also performed parts of the classical repertoire, notably the Mozart piano concerti. He is a highly gifted composer, having written several standards including his best-known hit "Spain", but also covering stylistic territory as wide-ranging as that of his playing, from jazz, to fusion, to Latin music, to orchestral and chamber works. Recordings made during his childhood show his talent flowered early, and in his 20s he worked in New York with Blue Mitchell and Stan Getz, before joining Miles Davis in 1968. In Davis's band he not only experimented with electronics, but - together with bassist Dave Holland - pushed at the boundaries of free jazz. When he and Holland left Davis in 1970, they worked together with saxophonist Anthony Braxton in the free group Circle. Then Corea formed Return to Forever, a fusion band with strong Latin overtones helped along by the presence in the line-up of Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira and singer Flora Purim. The band went through a number of incarnations during the 1970s, but broke up in the early 80s. Then Corea combined a return to acoustic styles of jazz - notably his duos with Herbie Hancock and Gary Burton - with a continued interest in fusion. www.chickcorea.com