Herbie Hancock
The jazz great on his passion for music, Buddhism, technology and flying privately
Interview by Matt Thurber - August 1, 2010
Pianist and composer Herbie Hancock–who ranks among the most influential jazz musicians of the last hundred years–is a bouncy and jovial free spirit. At age 70, he seems as excited about his new Apple iPad as he is about his latest album, The Imagine Project (which is also available as a video). The CD finds him performing with more than a dozen musicians from all over the world–from Pink and John Legend in the U.S. to Colombia’s Juanes, the Congo-based band Konono No.1 and the nomadic Saharah Desert band Tinariwen–with most of the 10 songs on the disc recorded in the guest artists’ home countries. The result expresses “peace through global collaboration,” Hancock explained.
Trained as a classical musician starting at age seven, Hancock became captivated by the jazz scene in high school. Since then, he has won 12 Grammy awards as well as an Oscar for scoring the movie Round Midnight, in which he also acted. In 2008, his River: The Joni Letters–a tribute to his friend Joni Mitchell–became only the second jazz record to win an album-of-the-year Grammy.
Hancock has a long-time love of technology and pioneered the use of new types of instruments, especially synthesizers. But what seems to excite him most these days is not his iPad or his musical endeavors but his spiritual life as a chapter leader at the Buddhist temple near his home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.
What influenced your interest in jazz?
When I was 13 I saw a performance of a jazz trio. And this trio had a piano player who was improvising with a bass player and a drummer and doing something I didn’t know how to do. So it was kind of curiosity, maybe a little jealousy, but also I liked what I heard and I wanted to learn how to do that.
Classical music, which you started with, can be very rigid.
You’re playing someone else’s composition and it’s always basically the same notes. What intrigued me about jazz and pulled me like a magnet was that I could create my own notes and chord sequences. And I learned more about the structure of music than when I was playing classical music. I learned harmony and a little bit about orchestration and about the creation of melodies from playing jazz and hanging out with musicians and asking them questions and going to jam sessions. Back in those days, they weren’t teaching jazz in many schools.
Is it important for musicians to learn the fundamentals before starting to improvise?
I could read music. I didn’t know anything about the fundamentals of harmony or the structure of music. Yes, I knew what a major chord was and a minor chord and a diminished chord, but beyond that I didn’t know anything. If you’re going to be an instrumental performer in classical music, they don’t emphasize any of that. They emphasize repertoire, just learning to play pieces. They don’t emphasize structure. Whereas playing jazz, it’s really necessary to learn those things.
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