Jan Hammer

A virtuoso on keyboards, Jan Hammer rose to prominence through his scoring of the sleek 1980s police drama Miami Vice while also serving as an original participant in John McLaughlin’s landmark fusion outfit Mahavishnu Orchestra. Having received classical training, he surfaced during the 1970s first alongside Mahavishnu and later with his own synthesizer-driven releases, notably The First Seven Days in 1975 and the rock-leaning Black Sheep four years later. Additional partnerships have linked him to Jeff Beck, Al Di Meola, Neal Schon, and numerous others. After the breakthrough of the polished Miami Vice soundtrack, which brought him a pair of Grammy Awards, he expanded into diverse scoring assignments that included the 1992 computer-animated production Beyond the Mind’s Eye. Although studio contributions for fellow artists have remained his primary focus, he has periodically revisited personal projects, releasing the atmospheric Seasons, Pt. 1 in 2018 and Pt. 2 in 2022.

Born into a musical household on April 17, 1948, in Prague—then part of Czechoslovakia—Hammer began piano lessons at four. By fourteen he was performing and recording with a traveling jazz unit that featured future Weather Report bassist Miroslav Vitous. He pursued theory and composition studies at the Prague Academy of Muse Arts, yet the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 prompted his relocation to the United States. Following attendance at the Berklee School of Music, he secured a year-long touring role with Sarah Vaughan, serving as both keyboardist and conductor. In 1970 he established himself in Manhattan, appearing as a sideman on sessions with Elvin Jones and Jeremy Steig. The next year he entered the Mahavishnu Orchestra, contributing to signature fusion statements such as The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire.

When the ensemble dissolved at the close of 1973, Hammer rejoined Mahavishnu violinist Jerry Goodman to record Like Children (1974). He issued The First Seven Days under his own name in 1975 and assembled the Jan Hammer Group to support live dates. That ensemble documented extensively across the subsequent two years, including joint work with guitarist Jeff Beck, as its fusion style gravitated toward R&B-inflected rhythms. After the 1978 album Melodies, Hammer dissolved the unit and cut the purely solo Black Sheep, performing every instrument himself. He soon formed another ensemble simply called Hammer. Early in the 1980s he collaborated with Al Di Meola on Electric Rendezvous, paired with Journey guitarist Neal Schon for Untold Passions and Here to Stay, and assisted Jeff Beck in the studio.

Throughout the decade Hammer also deepened his involvement in pop and rock session work; by 1984 he had begun scoring for television and film, starting with the motion picture A Night in Heaven. His pivotal opportunity arrived when producers of the new MTV-styled series Miami Vice enlisted him for weekly scoring duties. The 1985 soundtrack album, containing several of his pieces alongside rock tracks heard in the show, propelled his opening theme to the top of the pop singles chart—the first television theme to achieve that position since 1976. The collection enjoyed global success, and “Miami Vice Theme” earned Hammer Grammys for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Instrumental Composition.

He continued scoring Miami Vice through 1988, after which he withdrew to upstate New York to build a home studio and resume solo recording. The initial outcome, Snapshots, appeared in 1989 as another fully self-performed album. He thereafter concentrated again on soundtrack assignments, among them the well-received 1992 computer-animation project Beyond the Mind’s Eye. Drive, released in 1994, marked his first non-soundtrack effort in five years. For the balance of the decade he sustained lucrative assignments across television, film, commercials, and video games.

In 2006 Hammer provided the score for the documentary Cocaine Cowboys, chronicling the Miami narcotics scene of the 1980s. That same year he teamed with rapper TQ on a reinterpretation of the Miami Vice piece “Crockett’s Theme.” Turtles, an archival concert recording captured at Munich’s The Domicile in 1968 with saxophonist Olaf Kübler, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Cees See, surfaced the following year. He later joined longtime associate Jeff Beck onstage for the guitarist’s 2017 album Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Seasons, Pt. 1, Hammer’s first collection of original material in more than a decade, arrived in 2018. He revisited his jazz origins with the 2020 album Sketches in Jazz, while Seasons, Pt. 2—a set of synth-driven instrumental rock—emerged in 2022.