Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancockis an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth12 April 1940
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
I brought my 40 years of jazz experience to the table, ... but I wanted to make something more ambitious than a little box.
I have to care and I have to be honest and have the courage to be vulnerable. If that happens, then that's the best I can do. To just be a puppet for the audience is not very courageous. Just to do whatever they say they want - because a lot of times people will hear something new that they hadn't heard before and get turned on by a new experience and will want to hear more of that.
I mean, nobody has a statement on their record.
I knew of jazz, but I didn't like it. I always thought only older people liked jazz - you know, you had to be 19 or 20.
I'm looking less to musical sources for inspiration and broadening my scope beyond the entertainment field and looking more into life itself. Life today.
I'm looking at other sources for inspiration; feelings and developments that are happening in human life itself.
Still, when I finally left Miles in '68 and got my own band, it was a logical step; because anybody that left Miles always had their own band.
There was a radio station in Chicago, there was a guy named Al Benson, and he pretty much dominated black radio in the '50s.
The thing is, much of the way I look at music now, and its role as an aspect of culture, and creative expression for human beings in the 21st century, much of the way I look at it for a record like Future 2 Future is very similar to how I might look at it for a record like Directions in Music.
Not too many people my age really zeroed in on the blues. Most of the people that listened to it were older than teenagers.
I just wish more attention could be placed on the human being.
I hope to still be making records, but still traveling and touring, I don't know to the extent that I am now, because it's pretty wearing on your physical energy.
I hope to do more movie scores, I hope to do more work in the orchestral setting, some more tours that are more in the line that classical musicians play.
I'm involved in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, and I work with students with that, and I also help try to raise funds for that.