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If you’ve got tickets to see Herbie Hancock perform at Powell Hall on Thursday night, you should know going in that this is going to be more than just your standard jazz performance. With a career that spans more than five decades, the 77-year-old phenom is a writer, composer, Grammy and Academy Award winner, and—as seen in his recent performance in the film Valeria alongside Cara Delevingne and Clive Owen—the occasional actor. That being said, music is his first love, and he wants his audience to know that he’s here to change their lives.
“Sometimes if you are not thinking about how you’re going to deliver something and how you’re going to package it, you’re missing out on a new challenge for you as a musician, and that is to be able to deliver something in a way that opens people up so that they can absorb what it is that you’re trying to present to them,” the Chicago native says. “And what I’m trying to present to them is the joy of taking whatever happens in music, or whatever happens in life and realizing that you have the power to move forward no matter what happens to you. Every human being has infinite potential and somehow I hope that that message is in here in what we deliver to the people.”
In this interview, Hancock talks more about Buddhism, how he keeps things interesting on stage, and the challenge in playing music and operating a turntable at the same time.
You have such a strong and varied catalog of music that is full of popular standouts—“Cantaloupe Island,” “Rockit,” “‘Round Midnight”—what music stands out to you personally? Which albums do you feel fans should also give their attention to?
Two albums that I point to are Speak Like A Child and Maiden Voyage. The way the pieces are structured, particularly the arrangements on Speak Like A Child, just the sound that I get. I hadn’t heard anybody try to approach arranging in that same way before. It sounded like something new—a new approach to arranging for three horns with a jazz group. And harmonically it was different - different in a lot of different ways. It was more like an orchestration.
I remember when I wrote [Maiden Voyage], how the circumstances that surrounded making that composition, and it’s very close to me in my relationship with my wife. In two years, we will have been married 50 years. She was the one that when I was about to fall asleep the night before I had to actually turn this thing in, she kicked me out of the bed and said, “You’re not coming to bed until you finish writing that piece.” And it was done as a commercial, but then I said, “I think I should record this.” So I did. It’s a pretty piece. I’m very happy about the melody and how it was constructed. And for that time, I didn’t know of any other piece that was quite like that.
Are there any pieces of yours that have proven difficult to perform?
The difficulty I have, particularly with “Rockit,” is that there’s no reasonable way to play “Rockit” unless I have someone play turntables, or at least the turntable sound. And I don’t have a turntable player with me. I was doing a teaser version of it for a few years because I played some of the track and played to the track with a live band. It was a very complicated setup and sometimes it didn’t work so well. But I’ve been thinking about it lately, and I want to come up with a way we can do it even if we don’t have a person physically scratching with a record. This is the 21st century—we can make clips, and there are samples already out there of scratching. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to do it, I just have to have the time to put it together.
How do you keep your music interesting to yourself when you’re performing it?
I like to find new ways to treat things—even pieces that I’ve done many times in the past. Whether I get bored with doing them the same way for many years, periodically I rearrange them or juxtapose them with other pieces. There’s a lot of ways to be able to do that and still stay challenge in playing the music because that’s what I really like—the challenge of being able to try different things.
You have been a practicing Buddhist for several decades. How does your practice play into your professional life?
Buddhism not only keeps me focused, but it gives me the opportunity to see and think more clearly and more broadly. It helps in the way I treat people and how I respond to people. It helps me to keep myself in check too and recognize if I was too harsh with a person. This kind of gives me the pause that I need so that my responses and my attitude is one that can not only help myself but help others too. I find that particularly through Buddhism, when you treat people with respect, nine times out of ten they rise to the occasion, but if you walk into a situation where you’re prejudging people and being judgemental, it’s like dynamite.
One of the reasons that jazz really works is because the musicians don’t judge each other. Whatever anybody does we try to make it fit the music. We try to make it work. We try to use it in some way - it may create another direction but that could be more interesting than the one we were going on in the first place. It’s that kind of attitude that Buddhism supports and come out in my life and in my behavior.
What can people expect at your show?
Expect the unexpected, because I don’t want to bore people with just giving them what they might expect. For me, I like to give them something that they haven’t had before. If you’re going to give somebody something they already have, that’s a nice gesture, but what about giving them something that they don’t have or they haven’t had? Give them a new experience, give them something that they haven’t heard. That’s something that I’m always interested in doing, and finding a way to deliver it that works.
