''Children's Songs'' is an album by

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

Chick Corea Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and ...

, released in 1984. ''Children's Songs'' mainly consists of short songs with simple themes. There is little development in the pieces, which capture a variety of melodies and moods. Corea began writing the first song in 1971. In the preface of the annotated version Corea stated that he aimed "to convey simplicity as beauty, as represented in the Spirit of a child". There are stylistic and structural parallels to the cycle Mikrokosmos, by

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...

, including: * use of the pentatonic scales * employment of unusual time signatures and cross-rhythms * expressing a complex variety of atmosphere in a relatively short time * increasing difficulty and complexity through the sequence

Track listing

#"No.1" #"No.2" #"No.3" #"No.4" #"No.5" #"No.6" #"No.7" #"No.8" #"No.9" #"No.10" #"No.11" #"No.12" #"No.13" #"No.14" #"No.15" #"No.16 & 17" #"No.18" #"No.19" #"No.20" #"Addendum" - (for violin, cello and piano)

Personnel

* Chick Corea –

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

Fred Sherry Fred Sherry (born 1948) is an American cellist who is particularly admired for his work as a chamber musician and concert soloist. He studied with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School before winning the Young Concert Artists International Auditions ...

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cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

Ida Kavafian Ida Kavafian ( hy, Այտա Գավաֆեան) (born October 29, 1952 in Istanbul) is an American classical violinist and violist. Biography Kavafian was born in Turkey to Armenian parents. She moved with her family to America in 1956, and began ...

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violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

References

{{Authority control 1984 albums Chick Corea albums Albums produced by Manfred Eicher ECM Records albums Compositions for solo piano