Chick Corea

Chick Corea's Return To Forever is the luminous, Brazilian-tinged classic that launched one of jazz's most influential movements and gave the pianist's celebrated band its name. Recorded in 1972 at the dawn of the fusion era, it captures a moment of pure optimism and sunlit invention. Corea plays electric piano with a shimmering, weightless touch, surrounded by an extraordinary group: Joe Farrell on flute and soprano saxophone, the young virtuoso Stanley Clarkeon bass, Airto Moreira on drums and percussion, and the radiant voice of Flora Purim floating over it all. Together they conjure a music of weightless groove and irresistible melody, drawing on Brazilian rhythm, post-bop harmony and a bright, almost utopian sense of joy. The soaring "La Fiesta" became an instant standard, while the extended title suite drifts and dances through shifting moods with effortless grace. Unlike much of the heavier jazz-rock that followed, this is fusion at its most airborne and song-like, more concerned with beauty and flow than with power.

As one of the founding statements of the ECM catalogue, it helped define the label's early identity and remains a timeless, endlessly replayable document of a remarkable group at the very start of its journey. Its influence on the fusion and Latin-jazz that followed is impossible to overstate, yet the album wears its historical importance lightly, remaining first and foremost a pure pleasure to hear. This vinyl reissue restores the music to the format on which it was first discovered, warmth and groove intact.