Piano & Keyboard: Herbie Hancock

Trumpet: Terence Blanchard

Guitar/Vocal: Lionel Loueke

Bass: James Genus

Drums: Jaylen Petinaud

 

• Overture
• Footprints
• Actual Proof
• Secret Sauce
• Cantaloupe Island
• Chameleon
• Additional possibilities
• Come Running To Me
• Watermelon Man
• Butterfly
• Dolphin Dance
• Textures (part of overture)
• Rockit

*Program is subject to change

 

 

Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout his explorations, he has transcended limitations and genres while maintaining his unmistakable voice. With an illustrious career spanning five decades and 14 Grammy® Awards, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni Letters, he continues to amaze audiences across the globe.

There are few artists in the music industry who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock. As the immortal Miles Davis said in his autobiography, “Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.”

 

Born in Chicago in 1940, Herbie was a child piano prodigy who performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. He began playing jazz in high school, initially influenced by Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. He also developed a passion for electronics and science, and double-majored in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College.

 

In 1963, Miles Davis invited Herbie to join the Miles Davis Quintet. During his five years with Davis, Herbie and his colleagues Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums) recorded many classics, including ‘ESP’, ‘Nefertiti’ and ‘Sorcerer’. Later on, Herbie appeared on Davis’ groundbreaking ‘In a Silent Way.’

 

Herbie’s own solo career blossomed on Blue Note, with classic albums including ‘Maiden Voyage’, ‘Empyrean Isles’, and ‘Speak Like a Child’. He composed the score to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film ‘Blow Up’, which led to a successful career in feature film and television music.

 

Herbie won an Oscar in 1986 for scoring the film “‘Round Midnight”, in which he also appeared as an actor. Numerous television appearances over the years led to two hosting assignments in the 1980s: “Rock School” on PBS and Showtime’s “Coast To Coast”.

 

Herbie reunited with Bill Laswell to collaborate with some young hip-hop and techno artists on 2001’s FUTURE2FUTURE. He also joined with Roy Hargrove and Michael Brecker in 2002 to record a live concert album, ‘Directions In Music: Live at Massey Hall’, a tribute to John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

 

‘Possibilities’, released in August 2005, teamed Herbie with many popular artists, such as Sting, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Paul Simon, Carlos Santana, Joss Stone and Damien Rice. That year, he played a number of concert dates with a re-staffed Headhunters, and became the first-ever Artist-In-Residence at the Tennessee-based festival Bonnaroo.

 

In 2007, Hancock recorded and released ‘River: The Joni Letters’, a tribute to longtime friend and collaborator Joni Mitchell featuring Wayne Shorter, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and co-produced by Larry Klein. He enlisted vocalists Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza, Leonard Cohen and Mitchell herself to perform songs she wrote or was inspired by. The album received glowing reviews and was a year-end Top 10 choice for many critics. It also garnered three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; Herbie is one of only a handful of jazz musicians ever to receive that honor.

 

In 2010 Hancock released the critically-acclaimed CD, ‘Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project,’ winner of two 20ll Grammy Awards for Best Pop Collaboration and Best Improvised Jazz Solo. Utilizing the universal language of music to express its central themes of peace and global responsibility, the ‘Imagine’ project was recorded around the world and features a stellar group of musicians including Jeff Beck, Seal,Pink, Dave Matthews, The Chieftains, Lionel Loueke, Oumou Sangare, Konono #l, Anoushka Shankar, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tinariwen, and Ceu.

 

Herbie Hancock also maintains a thriving career outside the performing stage and recording studio. Recently named by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Creative Chair For Jazz, he currently also serves as Institute Chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, the foremost international organization devoted to the development of jazz performance and education worldwide. Hancock is also a founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace, and was awarded the much esteemed “Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres” by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

 

In July of 2011 Hancock was designated a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. Recognizing Herbie Hancock’s “dedication to the promotion of peace through dialogue, culture and the arts,” the Director-General has asked the celebrated jazz musician “to contribute to UNESCO’s efforts to promote mutual understanding among cultures, with a particular emphasis on fostering the emergence of new and creative ideas amongst youth, to find solutions to global problems, as well as ensuring equal access to the diversity of artistic expressions.” UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassadors are an outstanding group of celebrity advocates who have generously accepted to use their talent and status to help focus the world’s attention on the objectives and aims of UNESCO’s work in its fields of competence: education, culture, science and communication/information.

 

In December of 2013, Hancock was the recipient of a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor, and in 2014 he was was named the 2014 Norton Professor Of Poetry at Harvard University, completing his lectures series, “The Ethics Of Jazz,” as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series for a period of six weeks. His memoirs, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, were published by Viking in 2014, and in February 2016 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hancock is currently in the studio at work on a new album.

 

Now in the sixth decade of his professional life, Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: in the forefront of world culture, technology, business and music. Though one can’t track exactly where he will go next, he is sure to leave his inimitable imprint wherever he lands.