Jazz Articles about Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock: Inventions & Dimensions

by Norman Weinstein
July 27, 2005

All too often the concept of a Latin jazz album by a musician without a history inside that genre implies bop solos over a heavy-handed polyrhythmic foundation. What makes pianist Herbie Hancock's Inventions & Dimensions so utterly fresh and challenging, even decades after its original 1963 release, is his willingness to try a number of Latin-sounding gambits without resorting to a Drums of Passion rhythmic backdrop. Anyone who has appreciated Bud Powell's forays into a kind of proto-Latin improvisation will ...

Miles Davis: A Tribute to Jack Johnson

by Paul Olson
January 9, 2005

Well, here it is, finally: the Miles Davis album A Tribute to Jack Johnson, newly remastered and affordably available to those unwilling or unable to pay for the five-disc Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, which has been available since 2003. That's been Columbia/Legacy's modus operandi for Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way, and now Jack Johnson: put out the box set and after a suitable, cash-draining interval, cough up the remastered album alone.Jack Johnson 's re-release (more accurately at ...

Herbie Hancock: VSOP Live Under The Sky and The Piano

by Colin Fleming
October 16, 2004

Strange, sometimes, an artist's need to revisit his creative past and experiment with the new technologies of the present, both within a short period of time.

These two Herbie Hancock albums, recorded in the late seventies, are oppositional concepts--the VSOP date from Tokyo, a reunion of Miles Davis' second great quintet, with Freddie Hubbard replacing Davis on trumpet, The Piano a footnote experiment in direct to disk recording, Hancock encrypting music at the most elemental level of sound preservation without ...

Herbie Hancock: The Prisoner

by Jon Opstad
October 4, 2004

The opening “I Have a Dream" from this, Hancock's final (1969) session for the Blue Note label, is arguably his finest piece of ensemble writing on record. Although the remaining tracks don't quite reach the same peak of creativity and musicianship, the album remains one of Hancock's most essential.

The setting is a nonet and is pretty much a direct extension of the concept explored in Hancock's previous Blue Note album Speak Like a Child. Where that session found him ...

Herbie Hancock & V.S.O.P.: Live Under The Sky

by Jim Santella
October 3, 2004

Recorded in Tokyo at two evening concerts in July 1979, Herbie Hancock's exciting two-CD set includes the original two-LP recording in addition to previously unreleased material from the same two performances. Disc one was recorded on July 26th, while disc two was recorded on July 27th.

V.S.O.P. debuted in New York in 1976 and recorded in Tokyo a year later. The performances heard here mark the group's celebrated return to Japan after a subsequent two-year wait. Welcomed with ...

Miles Davis - Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings, 1963-1964

by Colin Fleming
September 22, 2004

Seven Steps : Review #1 | Review #2 | Review #3 | Discuss | Poll

Miles Davis Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 Columbia Legacy 2004

One of the more undervalued phases in Miles Davis' career, the years 1963-64 are typically deemed a fallow period, marked by a few mildly inventive studio creations and scattershot radio broadcasts. Davis' transformations were often stylistic, but this collection puts the bulk ...

Miles Davis - Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings, 1963-1964

by Jim Santella
September 22, 2004

Seven Steps : Review #1 | Review #2 | Review #3 | Discuss | Poll

Miles Davis Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 Columbia Legacy 2004

Seven discs paint a pretty good picture of the sound that Miles Davis gave us back then.

Some of the master's mid-'60s material has not been previously issued. As had been the case time and again, the Miles ...