"My wife called three times," a somewhat groggy Herbie Hancock said on the phone from his office in Los Angeles a few Sunday afternoons ago.
The charismatic pianist had been up all night.
At Joni Mitchell's.
After driving her home from a party at Prince's.
Plenty glam.
Don't call the scandal rags yet. The two stars are just friends. (Collaborators, too. Mitchell sang on Hancock's "Gershwin's World" and he reciprocated on her "Both Sides Now.")
"The idea was to stay [at the party] 10 or 20 minutes, just to talk to Prince about some things," said the former Miles Davis sideman. "Then when I dropped Joni off, we continued to talk. She was playing ball outside in her yard with her dog."
Hancock — sans Mitchell — appears with trumpeter Roy Hargrove and saxophonist Michael Brecker in the all-star band Directions in Music at 8 tonight at the Paramount Theatre.
Of the handful of jazz artists who can fill a large theater, Hancock, 64, continues to be one of the most creative and alluring.
He's a pianist whose harmonic approach is bedrock for modern players. The nine-time Grammy winner (and current nominee for best jazz instrumental solo on "Speak Like a Child" on Harvey Mason's album, "With All My Heart") and one-time Oscar winner (for the film score of " 'Round Midnight") is well known in both pop and jazz.
Though fans of his 1983 synthesizer hit and MTV video, "Rockit," may not be acquainted with lovers of his jazz classics, such as "Speak Like a Child" and "Dolphin Dance," they'll probably be in the same hall tonight, radiating the same adoration.
Directions in Music, which debuted in 2001 at Toronto's Massey Hall as a nod to John Coltrane and Miles Davis and won two Grammys in 2002, could have been just another yawner tribute band. But in fact, it is a taut, scintillating ensemble in the white-heat modal style of the late '60s. In concert, especially, it brings out the best in Hargrove.
"We try to challenge each other," said Hancock. "Not to make it difficult, but to open up some other doorways."
For this tour, hard-hitting Terri Lynne Carrington, who played on Hancock's Future2Future tour, replaces the subtle Brian Blade on drums. The wonderfully smart and sensitive Scott Colley plays bass.
Hancock says the band hasn't decided yet on a musical theme (it's not Coltrane and Miles), but, in a way, it hardly matters. The object of the game for these guys is where they take the material, not where they start.
Hancock, especially, is likely to take any "direction" that suits him. One afternoon a few years ago in San Sebastian, Spain, he astonished the crowd by cutting loose with a flying tumble of atonal free improv. At the North Sea Jazz Festival last summer, he huddled into tense, cerebral musical discussions with Wayne Shorter and Dave Holland that were almost abstruse.
There was a time — during his groundbreaking funk/fusion period in the '70s, with the Headhunters band — when fans thought they'd lost the golden touch, haunting harmonies and fleet runs of Hancock's acoustic piano forever. But in the late '70s, he returned, with V.S.O.P., eventually ushering Wynton Marsalis onto the scene.
In truth, Hancock always has unabashedly loved both jazz and pop, acoustic and electric music.
Even as he prepares to tour with Directions, the indefatigable pianist is enthusiastically planning a mega-project with Mitchell, Prince, Sting and a gallery of other stars.
"Most of the external forces in the business are constantly encouraging artists to fit into a particular pigeonhole," he said. "I sensed there is more to many artists than that and they'd be dying to do something that allows them to expand."
So far, the album project also includes Shorter, John Mayer, Trey Anastasio, Annie Lennox, Damien Rice, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Alicia Keys, Carlos Santana, the Roots, Jill Scott and Yo-Yo Ma.
Hancock became especially animated talking about an up-and-coming guitarist from Benin, Lionel Loueke, one of the resident artists in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute program at the University of Southern California. Hancock became chairman of the Monk Institute eight months ago.
"I asked him if he'd be interested in making an arrangement for 'Sister Moon,' Sting's tune," said Hancock. "I'd heard him put an African spice on things."
Always on the cutting edge of technology, Hancock is filming the project in HDTV, which, as the owner of a set, he knows needs content, desperately.
Hancock's cellphone rang in the background during our interview, and he politely excused himself for a moment. The call reminded him again of the night before.
"Joni told me the phones in her area are out," he said. "She bought a cellphone, but she doesn't know how to use it. She's amazing. She's so brilliant and articulate. She has a lot of power."
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Added to Library on February 4, 2005. (1911)
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