To The Stars (album) - Production

Production

Corea brought together the original members of Chick Corea Elektric Band for the first time since 1991, including bassist John Patitucci, drummer Dave Weckl, saxophonist Eric Marienthal and guitarist Frank Gambale. Gambale's electric guitar playing figures prominently in some of the tracks. In a statement in The Harvard Crimson, Corea commented that To the Stars represented a synergy of his three greatest passions: "My passion as a composer/performer, my passion for the Elektric Band as a perfect orchestra, and my passion for L. Ron Hubbard as the ideal artist." The album is his "favorite recording" out of his almost one hundred album discography.

Mike Manoogian designed the cover and book design for the 2004 hardcover edition of the novel To the Stars, and the artwork is copyrighted by the L. Ron Hubbard Library. The album cover utilizes the same design as the novel.

The novel To the Stars was reissued by Scientology-owned Galaxy Press at the same time as the album as a form of cross-marketing. According to Publishers Weekly, Corea's soundtrack to the novel was issued by Galaxy Press to give the company's "enormous marketing muscle" the ability to "tap into the vast Hubbard fan base".

Corea's 2004 piece "The Adventures of Hippocrates" was inspired by a robot like character named "Hippocrates" from Hubbard's science fiction series Ole Doc Methuselah. Corea would go on to compose another album in 2006, The Ultimate Adventure, also inspired by and named after a book by Hubbard, which earned him two Grammy Awards.