ARTS REVIEW: AN EVENING WITH HERBIE HANCOCK AT THE GRAMMY MUSEUM

A Wonderfully Intimate Evening Discussing 'The Imagine Project'

By: Melissa Berry

June 29, 2010

(June 2010 in Los Angeles, California) It’s been a long time since Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage created a generation of fans that has continued to grow for decades.  As one of the genuine geniuses of modern jazz, Hancock has had a hand in avant-garde Post Bop, Hard Bop, and Jazz Funk with a firm contribution in both the jazz and pop worlds. The historical “laundry list” of his accomplishments leading up to his current work, The Imagine Project, is as varied as this new album. In 1960, Hancock was an integral part of Miles Davis’s quintet. His 1962 tune, “Watermelon Man” (a stew of gospel, R&B and “soul jazz”), became a Top 10 hit for Mongo Santamaria who recorded it as a Cuban cha-cha-cha a year later. Hancock wrote the “swinging” ’60s score for the 1966 film Blow Up. In 1973, his Head Hunters landed on the pop charts fueled by a song that has become a funk standard, “Chameleon.” In 1983, he became a pop-music video star with the release of “Rockit” from Future Shock. And in 1986, Hancock received an Oscar for his score to the movie Round Midnight. His tribute to Joni Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters, won the 2008 Album of the Year Grammy. Lastly, lest we forget, Mr. Hancock is of such significant cultural importance that he even made a guest appearance on Sesame Street.

Herbie Hancock’s canon of work certainly does cover generations, as does the collection of music he’s assembled for this newest work.  An Evening with Herbie Hancock at the GRAMMY Museum was a wonderfully intimate evening spent with him discussing his career and the musical and global vastness of this project.  The event started with a viewing of the mini-documentary about the actual making of the album.  Recorded with over a dozen music notables, the documentary is made of footage from each recording session which was shot in the various locales, seven languages, and six continents. This isn’t just footage in the studio but also footage “taken in each collaborator’s home territory, whenever possible, to embody the spirit, hearts, sounds, colors, and flavor of each locale – a complete sensory musical experience with the result being an album/film without our “Herbie Hancock appetites.”

The lights came up, and there he was, in person, casually approaching the stage with his wonderful smile and warm aura.  He was dressed in a simple pair of slacks and sweater.  No pretense, no muss, no fuss — just a warm acknowledgment of the spontaneous and enthusiastic standing ovation.  In this room that only seats 200, standing ovations can become very intimate and a common bond for an evening.  It was as if we were all his buddies, and he was going to tell us something great that had just happened to him.  The first words out of his mouth were, “I think about purpose now.”  That was so very evident in what we had just seen on the screen. Concerts are wonderful adventures, but they just can’t deliver the music to you as being in the room with the artist and his thoughts.

Before we could get into The Imagine Project, there had to be some chat about his background.  Bob Santelli, the director of the GRAMMY Museum, is so adept at getting the guests to willingly share what their childhood was like.  It’s always fascinating and charming.  Hancock’s started with a classical education when he was seven. Considered a child prodigy, he played the first movement of Mozart‘s “Piano Concerto No. 5” at a young people’s concert with the Chicago Symphony at age 11. He told us that, years later, he played Ralph Vaughn Williams’s “Concerto for 2 Pianos” with Chinese superstar concert pianist Lang Lang. He admitted he really had to do some practicing. Through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher.   Instead, around high school age, he wanted to put a big band together so he recruited players from the school marching band.  His band included five trumpets and a trombone.  Shaking his head at the memory, he laughingly told us, “Turned out okay, I guess.”  He also told us that he loved electrical gadgets and majored in electrical engineering in college because he had to have a trade.  He followed through on his education but just knew that music was, in fact, his “trade.”  With his love of electric gadgets, meeting the Fender Rhodes piano was perfect. He admits to still being a “gadget geek” by “out-geeking” us with a spontaneous and enthusiastic explanation about some latest phone or…whatever it was that he had (with him) that had just come out.

From there, he went on to discuss being part of the Miles Davis Quintet as a young musician. “Miles was opened-minded and Miles was the coolest guy I’d ever met, so it must be cool to be open-minded.  That’s stayed with me all my life.”  Davis also gave him some other basic tenets about music that he’s carried with him all his life: don’t just listen to the people who play your instrument – listen rhythmically to the drummer and harmonically to the other instruments.  This advice has made Hancock an eternally youthful musical explorer.  He extends that concept to this new CD with its eclectic collaboration of jazz, funk, rock, pop, blues, and world music guests.   His love of this project was so apparent to the audience.  Sometimes, as we were listening to certain passages, he’d ask the sound technician to stop and replay it so he could enthusiastically describe what he loved about that part.

His “celebration of globalization message” about the role music can play in making the world a better place is admirable.  With such an ambitious and complex project, a natural question is “how do you choose the material for an album like this?”  Hancock explained that this was actually done with a team of people, primarily Larry Klein, who was the overall producer.  “There was a lot of research to suggest certain artists and certain songs. All the songs needed to have something to do with the idea of peace — not just global peace, but even family peace or peace within the individual, because very often we’re conflicted. We’re in one place, but we want to be someplace else. Or we’re doing one job, but we’d rather be doing another job. There are all sorts of things that happen even on the individual level. I looked back and said, you know these are all inspirational songs — inspirational for the human spirit, the human condition, and the day-to-day obstacles that people have to deal with. The song ‘Don’t Give Up’ is the perfect representative of that idea.”  It’s true.  As soon as one listens to Pink and John Legend’s sensitive version of Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” — which follows the opening song of “Imagine” featuring India Arie, Jeff Beck, Pink, and Seal — the tone and mood are set and we know we’re in good hands for the rest of this journey.  One track in particular is just a “real feel-good” because it’s always good to hear Joe Cocker’s “Space Captain.”  Susan Tedeschi’s throaty, storytelling vocals are accompanied by husband Derek Trucks’s slide guitar incantations. Then, with Hancock’s keyboards, which have the whimsical seriousness of the lyrics, the song humorously segues into its traditional a capella vocals and then works its way back into a dialogue between the instruments.  A new interpretation to a great old standard, it just breathes its way to your heart and soul like Joe Cocker did initially with it all those years ago.

The Imagine Project is a collection of collaborations with pop-music vocalists, though there are also a few “world” musician jazz artists involved. Hancock has always rolled with his artistic credibility intact, and this project is no exception. It’s musically challenging as much as it is engaging and accessible. Keep in mind that while he’s been doing all this, he’s continued as one of the most respected jazz pianists and composers of his generation, strengthening his reputation with maintaining consistent excellence while never compromising his music. Pop music could stand to exude this kind of sophistication a little more often.

Herbie Hancock’s Seven Decades Birthday Celebration is September 1, 2010 at the Hollywood Bowl. Special guests will include India Arie. Tickets on sale now at Ticketmaster.