Chick Corea Receives 44th Grammy Award Nomination Taking Listeners 'To the Stars'

Chick Corea, legendary jazz musician and 12-time Grammy Award winner, received his 44th Grammy nomination today for Best Instrumental Arrangement with "The Long Passage" on his latest album "To the Stars" (Chick Corea Elektric Band).

This album brought the Elektric Band back into the recording studio for the first time in a decade with Chick, on piano and synthesizers, reuniting with original band members; bassist John Patitucci, drummer Dave Weckl, guitarist Frank Gambale and saxophonist Eric Marienthal.

"The Elektric Band came together with a passion," says Corea. "We gathered in the studio to rehearse, and on the first run-through everyone was so incredibly over-the-top prepared... it sent us over the wall. From there it was a real ride. The energy of the band was incredible."

"There are a lot of grooves on the record, the compositions are amazing." says Marienthal.

The melodies, rhythms and arrangements of "To the Stars" combine to make this one of the most challenging albums in the group's history, raising the technical demands on each of the musicians, and taking them individually and collectively to entirely new heights.

Gambale notes, "'To the Stars' is some of the most difficult music I've ever played. But you know, I love the challenge."

The music of the Corea album is a spellbinding and masterfully innovative tone poem inspired by one of the most powerful novels in the history of science fiction -- L. Ron Hubbard's "To the Stars."

As for the inspiration for the music, Corea says, "I've been a fan of Hubbard's fiction writing since the early '70's and his hard edged science fiction masterpiece 'To the Stars' was always one of my favorite stories. When I started reading it again recently I came across a part in the beginning that describes the Captain of the spaceship playing a hypnotic melody on the piano in a dive of a spaceport bar in what is called 'New Chicago.' And Hubbard describes the Captain, he describes the bar, he describes the music. And I thought to myself, 'I hear that music.'"

Hubbard's novel revolves around a scientific equation: "As mass approaches infinity, time approaches zero." As the velocity of the starship 'The Hound of Heaven' approaches the speed of light, it also approaches zero time. So when the ship's crew returns home after having spent just a few months transporting vital supplies and technology to Earth's distant colonies, decades and generations have passed on Earth.

Corea's composition takes listeners along on the voyage of the "Hound of Heaven" and into the hearts and minds of the crew: the mysterious Captain Jocelyn, his fiery consort, Mistress Luck, and the homesick and rebellious Alan Corday, an engineer who was shanghaied on Earth to serve aboard a starship for reasons not fully divulged until the novel's stunning climax.

Galaxy Press has republished the novel "To the Stars" -- considered by many fans to be among the greatest novels in the science fiction genre -- in a new landmark hardcover edition, along with a riveting audio book version in CD format featuring Hollywood performers Bob Caso, R.F. Daley, Cathy Schenkelberg and Jim Meskimen.

L. Ron Hubbard is also the author of the milestone international bestsellers "Battlefield Earth" and the ten-volume "Mission Earth" series.

For more information visit www.tothestars.com.