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Herbie Hancock brings his legendary talents to Symphony Hall Sunday for a special concert

By Bill Beuttler (Boston Globe, April 16, 2004)

When jazz giants Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette roll into Symphony Hall on Sunday, they'll be carrying a lot of history with them.

Their friendship goes back 35 years or more. Bassist Holland and drummer DeJohnette live 45 minutes from each other in New York and have, as Holland says, "watched children come and go." DeJohnette first came across pianist Hancock when they were kids growing up on Chicago's South Side. All three played with the legendary Miles Davis, who employed each of them at one point (though not all at once), and their paths have converged many times over the decades. Those connections sweeten every note.

"We bring that to the music any time we play together," Holland says by phone.

Odd thing is, they really haven't played together — as a trio. They've collaborated in other combinations or as part of larger ensembles, but only once before this current tour as their own star-studded unit, at last year’s Montreal Jazz Festival. That's what makes this gathering so special.

Hancock, one of three artists in town this weekend who were named "Jazz Masters" recently by the National Endowment for the Arts (vocalist Nancy Wilson and guitarist Jim Hall are the others), has joined Holland and DeJohnette as an offshoot of a celebration in Chicago for Hancock's 64th birthday. Symphony Hall will be the final stop of this unprecedented fournight tour.

To fully appreciate the magnitude of this occasion, it's important to go back to Davis.

In the beginning was the quintet. The second of Davis’s two legendary quintets, that is — the one that stayed together from 1963 until the summer of '68. (The earlier, 1950s quintet featured John Coltrane.)

The '60s quintet had Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on teor sax, Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. It was, by consensus, among the greatest jazz combos that ever was, producing such classic albums as "E.S.P.," "Miles Smiles," and "Nefertiti," while radically expanding and liberating existing approaches to rhythm and harmony.

But Davis was always a highly protean artist, and each of his superstar sidemen was destined to lead important bands of his own. Carter was the first to leave. His replacement: a young Englishman named Dave Holland, whom Davis first saw playing at London's best-known jazz club, Ronnie Scott's.

Holland joined Davis's band shortly thereafter, but Hancock left within about a month to concentrate on his own band and was replaced by Chick Corea. Williams left a few months later, and his replacement was DeJohnette, who already was enjoying a successful career. He arrived in time to play with Holland on the landmark "Bitches Brew" album and a handful of double albums to follow. DeJohnette had known Holland before joining the band. In fact, he'd been at Ronnie Scott's the night Davis had met Holland, performing with onetime Davis pianist Bill Evans as part of a double bill.

As DeJohnette and Holland flourished with Davis, Hancock saw his solo career go into orbit. Post-Miles, his funkified remake of his 1963 hit "Watermelon Man" became an even bigger hit on the platinum-selling 1973 album "Head Hunters." He racked up an R&B Grammy and several MTV awards for the 1983 single "Rockit" and composed scores for films such as Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow Up" and Bertrand Tavernier’s "Round Midnight" (the latter earning Hancock an Oscar and an onscreen role as well).

In 1995 he enlisted the help of Holland and DeJohnette in a sextet and won a Grammy for "The New Standard," a CD of jazz versions of recent pop tunes. And his 1998 CD, "Gershwin's World," which brought together artists as disparate as Shorter, Corea, Joni Mitchell, Kathleen Battle, and Stevie Wonder to celebrate the music of George Gershwin, garnered Hancock three more Grammys.

Holland and DeJohnette each went on to have outstanding careers as leaders and sidemen themselves. Holland, in particular, now leads two groups — a quintet and a big band — that jazz aficionados rank among today's finest. DeJohnette, beyond his own series of projects as a leader, is probably best known for his long affiliation with the trio of pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Gary Peacock.

These endeavors have made getting together with Hancock for projects such as this tour difficult. "Actually," says DeJohnette, "the idea of playing a trio was something Dave and I had talked to Herbie about some time back. We’d played together with Herbie in the 'New Standards' project, and we just thought it might be a nice idea to do that."

When they were finally able to meet in Montreal last summer, the one-night performance more than met expectations. "It was great fun," says Holland. "The energy was wonderful onstage and also in the audience."

Holland and DeJohnette play down the all-star nature of the tour and play up the musicians' decadeslong association as friends and collaborators.

"We've all shared a lot of life things as well as some of the music onstage," Holland says. "And that always makes things richer to me, when there’s a story behind the music."

"We've got a long history, a great musical and personal friendship," says DeJohnette.

As of earlier this week, the set list for Sunday hadn't been decided, but Holland and DeJohnette both predict a mix of originals and standards. "We'll see what’s in the air,’’ says Holland, laughing. "Herbie's always got some surprises and some great ideas for approaching the music."

"Herbie is like that," says DeJohnette. "I mean, you don’t find out what's going on until you have the rehearsal."

Not that it worries masters like these three. "We're quick enough to pick up everything," DeJohnette says. "It shouldn't be a problem."


Guitarist Hall and singer Wilson are worthy of the title ‘Master’

By Bill Beuttler (Boston Globe, April 16, 2004)

Jim Hall isn't big on awards. Although he was given the prestigious "Jazz Master" honor earlier this year by the National Endowment for the Arts, he tries not to think about it. "Every time I start to feel like a big deal," he says, "the guitar looks at me and says, `Yeah, right — play me today.' "

Singer Nancy Wilson, another NEA Jazz Master recipient, has her own reason for being skeptical about the award (one of six given this year). Despite having recorded with Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing early in her career, she's never considered herself a jazz artist."I was shocked," Wilson says by phone from her home in California. "The bottom line was I never did the jazz circuit. Until, you know, 10 years ago. But I was amazed and very pleased."

Tomorrow night, jazz fans can see for themselves why each was a deserving recipient. Hall, 73, will perform at Sanders Theatre with a group of Harvard students, concluding a four-day residency as Harvard's visiting jazz artist for 2004. At the same time, Wilson, 67, will perform with Ramsey Lewis at Symphony Hall (with some of the proceeds benefitting the Pine Street Inn).

Hall, who will perform his own works as well as others who've had special significance in his career, lacks the name recognition of Wilson or Herbie Hancock (who plays Symphony Hall Sunday). But he's a guitarist's guitarist. Younger stars such as Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell revere him. "He was just really just a gigantic — well, he still is — a huge hero of mine," says Frisell, who took several lessons from Hall after dropping out of Berklee College of Music in 1971.

Hall's own guitar influence was Charlie Christian, whom he heard for the first time on Benny Goodman's 78 "Grand Slam."

"Charlie Christian had two choruses on that," Hall says, "and I still remember the moment. `Wow, what is that?' I didn't really know what he was doing, but I thought, `Boy, I sure wish I could do that.' I still feel that way."

After studying composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music Hall moved to LA and stumbled into a gig with someone who was another 2004 NEA honoree, drummer Chico Hamilton.

"And when I was with Chico," he says, "that's where I met Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown."

Hall's 1962 recording with Rollins, "The Bridge," is probably his best-known effort as a sideman, though Hall has worked with numerous other top artists over the years in addition to putting out albums under his own name.

Hall hasn't recorded much lately — the record industry being in such sorry shape, he says, that he hasn't been asked — but he's planning to record a series of performances at the Village Vanguard later this month for release via the Internet.

Wilson, on the other hand, is about to put out her second CD of 2004. The first, "Simple Pleasures," is a tasty collaboration with jazz pianist and longtime pal Ramsey Lewis and his trio. The second, "R.S.V.P." (for "Rare Songs, Very Personal"), is due out in a few weeks and undercuts her skepticism about being a jazz artist somewhat by featuring support from such notables as Shearing, Toots Thielemans, Gary Burton, Paquito D'Rivera, Phil Woods, and Bill Watrous.

Wilson's singing career does have a very different arc from those of most jazz musicians. It includes appearances on local television around her native Ohio while still a teenager, and she "worked with Sir Raleigh Randolph and His Sultans of Swing and played with every cabaret that came down the pike," she says. "I was the girl singer in Columbus."

Success came quickly after she moved to New York in late 1959, with early '60s hits, including "Guess Who I Saw Today," "Save Your Love for Me," and the Grammy-winning "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am." By the end of the decade, she was hosting her own Emmy-winning TV show, "The Nancy Wilson Show."

In other words, she was — and is — at least as much a pop star as a jazz singer. But she is a jazz fan and booster. In recent years she's hosted an NPR series called "Jazz Profiles," which against her wishes seems to be drawing to close. ("They have no funding for it," Wilson explains.)

She was also delighted to rub shoulders with previous NEA Jazz Masters at January's gala event. "To me the most amazing thing was to see — and to hear — Clark Terry," she recalls. "And Dave Brubeck. And to see Hank Jones, and Gerald Wilson. You know, that's my heart."

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
© Bill Beuttler