Herbie Hancock

There’s nothing like a high-profile investment in one’s past. “Herbie’s earned it, man,” Nick says. Besides, just as Hancock won’t bow to the purists, he won’t abandon them either. Hancock has been playing mostly acoustic piano since 2001’s electronica-infused Future2Future, releasing the acclaimed Directions In Music, a tribute to Davis and John Coltrane, with guitarist Michael Brecker and trumpeter Roy Hargrove, in 2002.

The long and short of it is that Hancock is pretty fly for a 65-year-old. “I actually used vintage instruments on this record,” he says in response to a slightly more genteel phrasing of Nick’s question. “Well, actually,” he pauses, “for the most part, we didn’t use the original instruments, but we used the software version of the instruments. There’s an approach to the development of virtual instruments called instrument modeling...” which the former double major in composition and electrical engineering proceeds to explain.

Technology is an important tool for Hancock who, in 1996, founded the Rhythm of Life Organization to bring computers into underprivileged classrooms. A long-practicing Buddhist, Hancock frequently returned to the idea of possibilities as an expression of his spirituality.

“When I was much younger,” he reflects, “I used to listen to music constantly. But as I grew older … my expression as a musician stopped being a priority, and the expansion of my life became a priority. And that opened up more possibilities for me as a musician.”

As such, Possibilities is a sincere communication of Herbie Hancock in 2005. If selling albums at Starbucks is the early-21st-century equivalent of going disco, no one should worry: Hancock actually went disco and subsequently recorded 1983’s Future Shock—one of the most forward-thinking and influential jazz LPs since the ’60s—as a direct result.

So, when a man who unquestionably powered epochal shifts in popular music in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, says he’s doing something—be it collaborating with Sting or applying a sample-heavy “environmental approach” to playing with a symphony orchestra, as Hancock’s been working on lately—it’s probably worth a listen. And if you’re in Starbucks, you might hear it anyway.

The Many Flavors of Herbie Hancock: A User's Guide
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Solo in the ‘60s Maiden Voyage (1965) is straight-up acoustic post-bop jazz. On the title track, Hancock’s solos sound at each moment like they could resolve back to the main theme or sail further into abstraction.

Miles! At the keys in Miles Davis’s second great quintet, from 1963 to 1968, Hancock helped Davis lay the lush acoustic foundation for the ethereal, electric classic In A Silent Way (1969).

Electric Madness Striking it solo, Hancock’s work grew increasingly adventurous. Sextant (1972) is an uncompromising avant-funk masterpiece. On “Hornets,” flighty brass squalls freely over ominously chattering electronics.

Funk Fusion If the sizzling funk of Head Hunters (1973) and Thrust (1974) sounds cliché today, it’s only because it provided the blueprint for nü-jazz mainstreamers like Medeski Martin & Wood and Galactic.

Starting from Scratch Besides a hit video that fired up a generation of turntablists (see Doug Pray’s Scratch documentary for testimony), Future Shock (1983) saw Hancock roving the eight-bit moonscapes of producer Bill Laswell.

And Beyond Hancock is game for anything, from Nirvana covers on New Standard (1995) to reconvening the Davis quintet (with Freddie Hubbard subbing for Miles) on V.S.O.P. (1977). The cream is never far away.