His Symphony Center appearance on Saturday — his 14th in 26 years — plotted the best path possible with a concert that acknowledged Hancock’s ubiquity while resisting a best-hits roadshow.
Piano and keyboard player Herbie Hancock performs as part of the Jazz Series at Symphony Center in Chicago on Saturday, March 30, 2024. The Chicago native, turning 84 next week, is one of music’s most catalytic forces — never mind in jazz, where he first made his name as a member of Miles Davis’s second quintet, in the 1960s.
The show led with what Hancock aptly termed an “Overture” — a trippy medley of his output, gradually coalescing from a wash of pre-recorded, Space Age electronica. Once Hancock’s sextet fully takes over, they usher us along a warp-speed tour of the Herbie-verse. The stops aren’t long — a wisp of “Butterfly,” a swatch of “Textures,” off 1980’s “Mr. Hands.”
Piano and keyboard player Herbie Hancock, left, performs with five other musicians as part of the Jazz Series at Symphony Center in Chicago on Saturday, March 30, 2024. Someone of Hancock’s stature has their pick of top-flight jazz musicians, as he did at Symphony Center. Trumpet eminence Terence Blanchard was there, reliably sailing into the stratosphere with each solo, as was bassist James Genus, of “Saturday Night Live” fame. Drummer Trevor Lawrence Jr. wasn’t one for grabby acrobatics — he had just one solo all night — but his deep-in-the-pocket playing pinned things down even when the rest of the tune was on the move.
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