Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock remains among the most admired yet polarizing presences in jazz, echoing the bold trajectory once forged by Miles Davis, the trumpeter who served as both his employer and guiding influence during his lifetime. Where Davis drove forward without pause and rarely revisited earlier phases until his final years, Hancock has traced an unpredictable route across nearly every shift in electronic and acoustic jazz as well as R&B from the closing decades of the twentieth century onward. Although his foundation rests with Bill Evans and he readily incorporates blues, funk, gospel, and contemporary classical elements, Hancock’s piano and keyboard expressions remain distinctly personal, marked by sophisticated harmonies and intricate, grounded rhythms that countless younger players continue to borrow. His engineering background and fascination with devices equipped him ideally for the electronic era; early on he championed the Rhodes electric piano and Hohner clavinet, later surrounding himself with expanding arrays of synthesizers and computers for his amplified projects. Even so, his devotion to the grand piano endured, and amid his wide-ranging explorations his keyboard approach grew steadily more robust and elaborate. He moves with equal ease between exchanging phrases alongside an energetic funk ensemble and engaging a world-class post-bop rhythm section, a flexibility that unsettles traditionalists on either side of the divide.

Hancock began piano studies at seven and soon earned recognition as a prodigy, performing the opening movement of a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony at eleven. Following his time at Grinnell College, Donald Byrd invited him in 1961 to join his ensemble in New York City, after which Blue Note quickly extended a solo recording contract. His first album, Takin’ Off, gained momentum once Mongo Santamaria interpreted one of its tracks, “Watermelon Man.” In May 1963 Miles Davis recruited him for the Seven Steps to Heaven sessions, and he stayed five years, shaping Davis’s developing sound, refining his own playing, and adopting the Rhodes electric piano at Davis’s urging. During this period his solo output for Blue Note flourished, yielding increasingly refined works such as “Maiden Voyage,” “Cantaloupe Island,” “Goodbye to Childhood,” and the refined “Speak Like a Child.” He also contributed to numerous East Coast dates produced by Creed Taylor and created an innovative score for Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up, an assignment that opened doors to additional cinematic work.

After departing Davis’s group in 1968, Hancock released the polished funk recording Fat Albert Rotunda and assembled a sextet in 1969 that became one of the era’s most adventurous jazz-rock ensembles. Deeply engaged with electronics by then, he incorporated Patrick Gleeson’s synthesizer alongside his Echoplexed, fuzz-wah-treated electric piano and clavinet, resulting in recordings that grew more expansive and rhythmically intricate, carving out a distinctive avant-garde niche. By 1970 the musicians adopted both English and African names, Hancock’s being Mwandishi. Financial pressures forced the ensemble’s dissolution in 1973; having embraced Buddhism, Hancock decided his primary aim should be audience enjoyment.

He next formed a powerful funk outfit whose debut, Head Hunters, featured the Sly Stone-inspired hit “Chameleon” and became the best-selling jazz album of its time. Managing all synthesizers himself, Hancock’s densely rhythmic comping frequently merged into the rhythm section while still allowing glimpses of his earlier urbane harmonic language. He continued issuing electric albums of generally high caliber throughout the 1970s before exploring disco toward the decade’s close. Yet he never abandoned acoustic jazz. A single reunion of the 1965 Miles Davis Quintet—Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Freddie Hubbard substituting for Davis—took place at the 1976 Newport Jazz Festival in New York, leading to a tour the next year under the name V.S.O.P. The broad acclaim for these performances confirmed Hancock’s stature as a formidable pianist, demonstrated that Davis’s mid-1960s post-bop approach retained vitality, and signaled the approach of a neo-traditional revival that gained traction in the 1980s through Wynton Marsalis and like-minded artists. V.S.O.P. maintained occasional reunions until 1992, though Tony Williams’s death in 1997 raised questions about future gatherings.

Hancock’s adaptable course persisted through the 1980s: he scored an MTV success in 1983 with the scratch-infused, electro-styled single “Rockit” paired with a memorable video; he launched a dynamic collaboration with Gambian kora master Foday Musa Suso that produced the vibrant 1986 live set Jazz Africa; he composed for film and appeared at festivals and on tours with the Marsalis brothers, George Benson, Michael Brecker, and others. Following the 1988 techno-pop project Perfect Machine, he left Columbia, his label since 1973, signed briefly with Qwest—yielding little beyond A Tribute to Miles in 1992—and then reached an agreement with Polygram in 1994 to record jazz for Verve and pop material for Mercury.

Well into vigorous middle age, Hancock’s inquisitiveness, range, and ongoing development showed no decline; in 1998 he delivered Gershwin’s World. His interest in blending electronic music with jazz reappeared on 2001’s Future 2 Future, while he simultaneously examined contemporary straight-ahead directions on 2005’s Possibilities. The 2007 release River: The Joni Letters presented distinctive jazz interpretations of Joni Mitchell songs and earned the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2008. Two years later he issued The Imagine Project, recorded across seven countries with participants including Dave Matthews, Juanes, and Wayne Shorter. He was also appointed Creative Chair for the New Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2013 Hancock received a Kennedy Center Honors award recognizing his contributions to American performing arts. An expanded tenth-anniversary edition of River: The Joni Letters appeared in 2017, and he maintains an active performance schedule.