Jazz keyboard giant Herbie Hancock plays Stern Grove
Piano legend Herbie Hancock brings his current group to the stage at the Stern Grove Festival Sunday afternoon, headlining after a set by the SFJAZZ Collective.
Over the course of his 40+ year career, Hancock has proven himself comfortable whether exploring to his acoustic, hard-bop roots or experimenting with the latest in electronic gadgetry. Approaching his 80th birthday next year, the keyboardist continues to blaze new trails. A critical favorite who still managed to score chart hits (almost unheard of for a jazz artist), Hancock's resume reads like a timeline of important musical landmarks from the early 1960s forward.
Hancock made an early mark as a sideman with trumpet player Donald Byrd and saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Phil Woods, but came to fame playing in the seminal '60s quintet of Miles Davis. though he was already recording as a leader for Blue Note Records. In fact, it was his stellar solo debut Takin' Off with the oft-covered hit "Watermelon Man" that caught the trumpet player's ear. The pianist produced a string of his own classic albums as well as cranking out dozens of recording sessions with fellow Davis quintet members Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams, guitarist Grant Green, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and trumpet players Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.
Hancock contributed to the trumpeter's final acoustic-oriented masterworks like Sorcerer and Nefertiti as well as helping shepherd early fusion landmarks Filles de Kilamangaro and In a Silent Way before branching out on his own path into electric jazz. The keyboardist reached the outer limits with the heady, spiritual expansiveness of his sextet Mwandishi (the efforts Crossings and Sextant still sound futuristic to this day) before taking fusion into a more populist, funky direction with his successful Headhunters band. His albums Head Hunters and Thrust put a jazzy spin on the hard funk of Sly Stone and James Brown and made the group arena headliners
The musician would explore a myriad of avenues during the rest of the '70s, making albums with more of a commercial slant, but also recording and touring as an acoustic piano duo with fellow Davis alumnus Chick Corea and reuniting with Miles quintet members Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard filling in for Davis as the group V.S.O.P.
In 1983, Hancock scored a massive pop hit with his pioneering jazz-meets-hip-hop dance-floor classic "Rockit" that marked his first collaboration with bassist/producer Bill Laswell. The song's surreal video garnered heavy MTV airplay and his live performance of the tune on the Grammys telecast in 1984 featuring Grandmixer D.ST scratching records would inspire a generation of hip-hop DJs in the decade that followed.
Hancock has remained as searching as ever in more recent years, immersing himself in electronica for Future2Future (which reunited the keyboardist with "Rockit" producer Bill Laswell"), indulging in all-star collaborations with both jazz artists (the Directions in Music group, which paid tribute to the music of Davis and John Coltrane) and musicians in the pop and rock world (2002's Possibilities with Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera and Sting).
Perhaps his biggest triumph was his 2007 album River: The Joni Letters, a salute to the music of Joni Mitchell which shocked the music world when it won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Hancock continues to tour regularly with his current band featuring gifted West African guitarist Lionel Loueke, drummer Jaylen Petinaud, bassist James Genus and trumpet maestro Terence Blanchard. Next week, the keyboardist is scheduled to reunite with the Headhunters band for a special show at the Hollywood Bowl that will mark the first time in a half century he has played with the original group featuring drummer Harvey Mason, saxophonist Bennie Maupin, percussionist Bill Summers, and bassist Marcus Miller filling in for the late Paul Jackson.
For this show at Stern Grove Sunday, Hancock and his group will be joined by the acclaimed SFJAZZ Collective. Founded in 2004, the resident ensemble for SFJAZZ has been a group with fluid membership that has included an array of jazz legends and rising young players from the Bay Area and beyond. Past players include such notables as saxophonists Joshua Redman, Joe Lovano and Miguel Zenón (a founding member who only left the group earlier this year), trumpet players Nicholas Payton, Dave Douglas and Avishai Cohen, vibraphonists Bobby Hutcherson and Stefon Harris, pianist Renee Rosnes and drummers Brian Blade and Eric Harland. The group's current line-up features music director and tenor/soprano saxophonist Chris Potter, longtime tenor sax player David Sánchez, trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, vibraphone player Warren Wolf, keyboard player Edward Simon, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Kendrick Scott. DJ Juan "Wonway Posibul" Amador plays music before and between acts.
Stern Grove Festival: Herbie Hancock with the SFJAZZ Collective
Sunday, Aug. 11, 2 p.m. Free (reservations sold out; information here)
Stern Grove