Most musicologists consider the talented Jelly Roll Morton to be the father of jazz piano. He was a masterful composer, blending blues and ragtime to create a new sound, as evidenced in his 1915 “Jelly Roll Blues”, which is said to be the first jazz composition ever published. Morton was also one of the main creators of the “swing” style, in which notes are played in a relaxed way, slightly behind the rhythm, with the general accent shifted towards the times out of rhythm, giving more weight to the second and fourth bars instead of the first and third. He was not only a prolific composer, but also a gifted pianist, and his unique style of accompanying soloists greatly contributed to promoting the role of the piano in modern jazz. During the swing era, jazz was usually performed by big bands that had a complete rhythm section composed of drums, bass, guitar and
piano
.Corea adopted both traditional piano and modern keyboard instruments, such as synthesizers, skillfully combining elements of Latin music with sounds oriented to rock and funk, giving new life to jazz and presenting it to a worldwide audience. The piano is unique among most musical instruments, since it can play melody and harmony simultaneously, which makes it capable of playing an accompanying or leading role. In that sense, you can think of it as the ideal member of the ensemble, one of the main reasons why jazz composers and orchestra conductors have relied on it for a long time. In the early years of jazz (around 1900s), until the Swing Era (around 1940s), the piano was still firmly embedded in the band's rhythm section. More than a century old and counting,
