sideman

Although he was admitted into Juilliard for piano, he quickly dropped out and became a sought-after jazz sideman for his crisp agility and ingenious chord voicings, playing with Sarah Vaughan, Mongo Santamaría, Stan Getz and others.

It’s been around 60 years since Corea emerged on the New York jazz scene as a promising young sideman.

He’s recorded hundreds of albums as both leader and sideman and performed thousands of concerts touching all parts of the world, dating back to the 1940s.

And, the life of a sideman had become all the more difficult in recent years.