On Chick Corea's Birthday, a Newly Uncovered Archival Release

On what would have been Chick Corea's 84th birthday, a newly discovered recording of his composition "The Visitors"—written for vibraphonist Gary Burton ’62 ’89H and pianist Kirill Gerstein ’96—has been released via ECM Records. Performed at the Gilmore Piano Festival in 2012, the piece stands as a tribute to Corea's uncategorizable creativity and to a musical friendship decades in the making.

Burton studied at Berklee in the early sixties and returned in 1971 as a professor, eventually becoming the college's first executive vice president in 1996—a role he held until his retirement from the college in 2004.

During a tour stop in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the ’90s, Burton met a 12-year-old Kirill Gerstein, who slipped Burton a demo cassette. When Burton listened a few weeks later, he was blown away by what he heard. "[Gerstein] sounded like Keith Jarrett!" says Burton.

With Burton's help navigating the US immigration process and converting a pair of dorm rooms into an apartment for the teen and his mother, Gerstein enrolled at Berklee two years later, becoming the youngest student in the school's history at 14 years old. Gerstein went on to a remarkable career, becoming, by Burton's reckoning, "one of the top 5 or 10 classical pianists in the world."

After Gerstein won the Gilmore Piano Festival's prestigious Artist Award in 2010, he and Burton approached Chick Corea, a longtime collaborator of Burton's, to compose a duet for them. The resulting commission, "The Visitors," would be performed only twice, in 2012: once at Berklee, and once at that year's Gilmore Piano Festival.

They assumed the piece would live only in memory—until they learned, more than a decade later, that the Gilmore Festival had made a high-quality recording of the performance. What was more: listening back to the piece more than 10 years on, Burton says, "We realized it was a brilliant performance and a wonderful example of Chick's writing."

The work plays on the borders between genres, resisting easy categorization. "But of course, that was Chick, who floated back and forth between classical and jazz," says Burton, adding that with Gerstein and himself making the music, "what else could it be?"

The recording was mixed with legendary producer Manfred Eicher and is out this week on Eicher's storied ECM label. "I'm just proud to have this piece out there," says Burton, "and at 82, happy to add another achievement to my legacy."

Listen to Chick Corea's "The Visitors," performed by Gary Burton and Kirill Gerstein: