Jazz At Lincoln Center Celebrates Chick Corea, Darren Walker And Terence Blanchard In In-Person, Streamed Programs

Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York this week is celebrating some of the jazz world’s biggest stars as well as the role the arts have played in creating the cultural identity of the United States.

The programs include its 2022 gala, “Body + Soul: America Rises through the Arts,” which was held on April 13, its first such in-person fundraiser since 2019. This was hosted by Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance and honored Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and composer and musician Terence Blanchard; this is available on demand through 11:59 p.m. on April 19.

Three additional concerts are celebrating pianist and composer Chick Corea, who died in February 2021. At 8 p.m. tonight, a concert, “Celebrating Chick Corea,” will be offered; this will be directed by Corea’s bandmate, bassist John Patitucci, and feature band members and collaborators from Corea’s almost 60-year-long career, who will perform some of Corea’s most loved music, what Jazz at Lincoln Center describes as “straight-ahead jazz, jazz fusion, avant-garde, Latin Jazz (and) classical progressive rock.”

Performers at this concert will include Ruben Blades, the singer and activist; Hubert Laws and Ted Nash, flutists; pianists including Renee Rosnes, Billy Childs and Robert Rodriguez; Adam Rogers and Yotam Silberstein, guitarists; Carlos Henriquez and Christian McBride, bassists; and Chris Potter and Eric Marienthal, saxophonists. There also will be a reunion performance by Corea’s Elektric Band, while Corea’s recording engineer Bernie Kirsh will mix sound.

Also tonight, at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club, the pianist Elio Villafranca will perform a concert described by Jazz at Lincoln Center as an exploration of “Corea’s music from an Afro-Caribbean-meets-jazz perspective by pianist and composer . . .Villafranca, whom Corea hand-picked to perform at Dizzy’s during the 2013 Chick Corea Festival.”

The 8 p.m. concert also will be streamed and available until 11:59 p.m. on April 21