| To the Stars | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | August 24, 2004 | |||
| Recorded | 2004 | |||
| Genre | Jazz fusion, post-bop | |||
| Length | 68:16 | |||
| Label | Stretch | |||
| Producer | Chick Corea | |||
| Chick Corea Elektric Band chronology | ||||
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To the Stars is an album by American jazz fusion group the Chick Corea Elektric Band, released on August 24, 2004, by Stretch Records. Jazz musician Chick Corea, a longtime member of the Church of Scientology, was inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction 1954 novel To the Stars. Hubbard's book tells the story of an interstellar crew which experiences the effects of time dilation due to traveling at near light speed. A few days experienced by the ship's crew could amount to hundreds of years for their friends and family back on Earth.
Corea was influenced in particular by a scene from Hubbard's work where one of the main characters plays the piano, and he created the album as a tone poem piece. It was the first time this line-up of his Chick Corea Elektric Band had gotten together since 1991. Scientology-owned Galaxy Press reissued the book at the same time as the album's release as a form of cross-marketing. Corea later produced another album, The Ultimate Adventure, also inspired by and named after a work by Hubbard.
The album received mostly positive reviews. Christopher Blagg of the Boston Herald commented: "Somewhere L. Ron Hubbard was smiling," and Mike Hobart of the Financial Times described the album as "a fine programme of jazz-fusion". It reached number eight on the U.S. Top Contemporary Jazz charts in September 2004, and garnered Corea a 2004 Grammy Award nomination for instrumental arrangement for the track "The Long Passage".