Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Chick Corea’s tour wraps up in Seoul
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The 16-time Grammy winning fusion jazz ensemble Return to Forever IV will visit Korea as a finale of its world tour.
Founded by legendary keyboardist Chick Corea in 1972, the group will hold two concerts in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province and Seoul on Oct. 12 and 14 respectively.
In the group’s first phase, Corea performed Latin-oriented music with bass guitarist Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim and Joe Farrell.
Then they moved to electric jazz rock music with Corea, Clarke, drummer Lenny White, Bill Connors, Al DiMeola, Steve Gadd and Mingo Lewis. Their biggest hit “Romantic Warrior” was released during this period.
Corea’s wife Gayle Moran Corea joined as a vocalist on the next album “Musicmagic” and the band staged a world tour in 1977, before disbanding.
They reunited in 2008, releasing a remixed and digitally remastered anthology box set and toured the United States. Return to Forever IV is their fourth reunion.
Earlier this year, the group kicked off a world tour titled “Return to Forever IV” and Seoul is the last stop. For this tour, original members Corea, Clarke and White have joined up with Frank Gambale and Jean-Luc Ponty. Gambale is an Austrian jazz guitarist and Ponty a jazz-rock violinist-pioneer.
“Return to Forever grew out of my desire to want to communicate my music to many people. I then joined up with Stanley Clarke and we both love to make people happy with our music. This is the spirit of Return to Forever,” Corea was quoted as saying by local music magazine Jazz People.
“The requests for Return to Forever’s music have been constant throughout the years. They come to me; they come to Stanley and Lenny. We talk about it — and we think how much creative fun there is when we come together. We do it for the fun of teamwork and good friendship and the thrill of playing our music for audiences that love to hear it,” Corea said.
The group will perform hit songs such as “Romantic Warrior,” “No Mystery” and “Spain” written by Corea as well as other songs, including White’s “Sorceress” and Clarke’s “After the Cosmic Rain.”
The concerts will be at the Aram Theater, Goyang Aram Nuri Arts Complex on Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. and the Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall on Oct. 14 at 8 p.m.
Tickets cost from 55,000 to 220,000 won. For more information, call (02) 6292-9370.