Herbie Hancock – Yesterday, today, and tomorrow
Last night, Herbie Hancock played a show at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. My wife and I caught it on our way home from Cape Cod. What struck me most, as I write my book about the Mwandishi band, is how much Herbie’s current playing captures the essence of what he was doing during those seemingly more free form days in the early 1970s. Last night’s “Imagine Project” show was quite stunning. Of course it was musically eclectic, yet everything was tied together by Herbie’s comping, which turns all things into one unfolding story, irrespective of the surface detail of the music. Is it “funk”, “jazz”, “pop”, whatever? The question has absolutely no meaning here.
What I found in his playing, as I did with Herbie Hancock’s Joni record, was a searching quality familiar to me from all that I’ve been listening to of the Mwandishi band (and I’ve listened a lot). Whether the textures were deep funky grooves or sinuous lines that float and melt, the music is ever rising and falling, shifting ever so subtly, building through repetition and variation. Whether Herbie solos or comps, he seems to have an intuitive sense of where he’s going, and it is within the searching for how he will get there and what side-turns in the road will bear interesting fruit, that the most interesting moments emerge. Last night, these qualities filtered through the playing of everyone else in the band – and it was a terrific band, with a wonderful sense of rapport and playful interchange.
Herbie Hancock’s ‘Imagine Project’ on the road was a romp, sometimes delicate and other times foot stomping, through nearly fifty years of his music. The tunes, new and old, all became somehow part of one integral fabric. Favorite moments were a floating texture that emerged between verses of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Court and Spark’, the deep groove and wild interplay between Herbie, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and bassist James Gebus on ‘Actual Proof’, and a gorgeous segue between the brief appearance of ‘Dolphin Dance’ and ‘Round Midnight’, the latter beautifully phrased by guitarist Lionel Loueke. I could go on and on.
There were important musical lessons that Herbie Hancock learned while playing with Miles (and with Donald Byrd and Eric Dolphy) that he explored further with the Mwandishi band. And some of them were very clearly in evidence throughout Herbie’s music last night.
Bob Gluck's Blog 
What a wonderfully written review, Bob. Herbie is a close family friend and he is just as much a positive influence as a human being as his music is to art. Thanks for your recognition!
Thank you, Mark. I could not agree more about Herbie. I wish people found less recreational interest in criticizing precisely what he does best, which simultaneously puts it right out there while making you reflect and think.
Bob,
Thanks for that. I must be reading the wrong sources because I have been waiting to see someone write that for a long time. You slide right up to it when you talk about the enigmatic, ineffable searching quality that is ALWAYS there with Herbie. The Oumou on the title track of Imagine is killing me right now as is the last track with Chaka Khan. Have you seen the studio jam with Anoushka
and Indian drums and vocalist, where they trade for awhile? BTW, is that all Fazioli on the record? I am psyched for your book.
peace
Sometimes, it takes 40 years to reflect on things for the time to be right, but I agree that a book about this period of Herbie Hancock’s work is well, well overdue. I actually have not yet heard the new recording (although I look forward to it), nor the jam you mention (thanks for the tip!), so I don’t have an answer to your question. I do know that Herbie’s been playing the Fazioli. The Fazioli he’s traveling with now is a beautiful piano and I’m very picky about pianos!