Herbie Hancock: Seven Decades of Imagination

Andrey Henkin

Contributor since 2001

Recent articles (211 total)

Published: June 21, 2010

Hancock just turned 70, though he still maintains the impish smile of his youth. He will celebrate his decades in music with a concert at Carnegie Hall this month including old friends like Shorter. It is a rare moment to look backwards for an artist always facing the future. Hancock is purely a musician now, not jazz, not pop, not anything definable. He puts it ardently: "I do what I want to do and I do what I feel, what I believe in. I have to represent what I believe in. And I'm the only one that lives in this skin and has to be responsible for it. And I never signed a contract in blood that said I had to remain a jazz musician. But the truth is there's jazz in all the records I do, even if I tried not to do it, it's always going to be there if I'm going to be honest with myself."

Selected Discography:
Herbie Hancock—The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions (Blue Note, 1961-69)
Miles Davis Quintet—1965-1968: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (Columbia-Legacy, 1965-8)
Herbie Hancock—Mwandishi (Warner Bros., 1970)
Herbie Hancock—Head Hunters (Columbia-Legacy, 1973)
Herbie Hancock—The Piano (Columbia-Legacy, 1978)
Herbie Hancock—V.S.O.P.: Live Under The Sky (Columbia-Legacy, 1979)