“We had an amazing time last night,” says Herbie Hancock from his world tour in Saint Maritz, France. “We broke through a new threshold. Everybody on the band is on fire right now.”
His voices sings with enthusiasm as he describes the milestone performance.
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“I don’t even know what happened,” he says. “I just remember before we walked out on stage, I said half jokingly, ‘Let’s go stretch out on these people.’ But from the get-go, the music just started flying. They didn’t know what hit ‘em, but they loved it.”
If you think the legendary jazz pianist would be bored after nearly six decades of performing, you’d be dead wrong. Throughout his career Hancock has always been at the forefront of musical progression: that’s one thing that’s never changed.
He is now touring with a ensemble quintet of “young lions” as he calls them, including wunderkind Terrace Martin who helped produce Kendrick Lamar’s critically-acclaimed jazz/hip-hop album “To Pimp a Butterfly.”
“It’s very exciting that young people are responding to this. It not only keeps the music alive, but it helps the music to grow and progress. If you don’t have new people coming in and loving jazz, then it’s got nowhere to go.” – Herbie Hancock
“There is a whole new kind of growth of jazz and collaboration that’s emanating out of the South Central area in L.A.,” he says. “These are musicians who have a foothold in jazz, but also in R&B, rap, hip-hop and pop. It’s like a whole new scene that’s been created and the audience is the kids. It’s very exciting that young people are responding to this. It not only keeps the music alive, but it helps the music to grow and progress. If you don’t have new people coming in and loving jazz, then it’s got nowhere to go.”
Watch a sneak peak of the 2017 summer tour
Hancock was a young lion himself back in the 1963 when he was called on at the tender age of 23 to play piano in Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet, a legendary group that developed a style of jazz known as post-bop. At the time, they broke all the rules and created a completely new type of music that was so sophisticated and improvisatory in its form that the chord changes could hardly be categorized.
Later on in the 1970s, Hancock broke new ground by incorporating synthesizers and funk into jazz with his classic group The Headhunters. Again in the 1980s, Hancock was at the forefront, now in the newly emerging hip-hop scene by incorporating turntables into the first classic jazz/hip-hop track “Rockit.”
While he enjoys schooling his younger band mates on jazz history, Hancock is a lifelong learner himself.
“It’s definitely an exchange,” he admits. “They’re enjoying the stories I’m telling about how things were done back then. The torch keeps getting handed down from generation to generation, but I’m learning from them, too, musically, how they work, how they record. In this case, I have to sit in the background a bit more than I’m used to, but I’m able to do things I’ve never done before.”
After winning his 12th Grammy for Album of the Year for “River: The Joni Letters” in 2008, Hancock is currently working on a new album that he hopes to release by the beginning of next year, featuring guest appearances by pop star Pharrell Williams and a host of international prodigies.
“One of the reasons my new record is taking so long is that we are using a type a recording that I haven’t experience before,” he says. “When I recorded with Miles, you had to have a razor blade to cut the tape. Now you hit a button on the keyboard and you can make it happen.”
On tour, Hancock is playing a smattering of hits from throughout his career mixed in with new material from the upcoming record.
“Some of it is older material updated, upgraded in a new arrangement,” he says. “We’ll go from older pieces into a newer piece and back to an a older piece into the new way. Putting it together with a sense of episodes is a key theme with this band.”
In addition to Martin on alto sax and keyboards, the quintet will feature Lionel Loueke on guitar and voice harmonizer, James Genus on bass, and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.
“I’ve never heard anybody ever play like Lionel,” says Hancock. “He was born in Benin and brings a whole new element. James can play the funkiest bass line you ever want to hear but he can also stretch it out and take you to Mars and back.”
For more information, visit herbiehancock.com or montbleuresort.com.
