Herbie Hancock and Bubbles of Spirit
Seeing one of the greats of jazz piano in San Francisco's Stern Grove
Strolling down a trail into the magical Stern Grove forest in San Francisco, the crankiness of a long drive dissolved into giddy anticipation. I was just minutes away from seeing a greatest-of-all-time in jazz music. Minutes away from being meters away from the eclectic pianist Herbie Hancock, whose wild arc of jazz piano styles from traditional to funk, electronica and fusion all started seven decades ago in the 1950s.
The bass of a warm-up DJ thudded through the tall stands of beautiful eucalyptus, with their crisp subtle scent. The mist of a heavy summer fog hung in the trees across branches, gently being pulled in an onshore breeze from the Pacific. My pace accelerated, just as when walking in a crowd in an airport terminal or at a stadium and continuously trying to gently overtake people, but subtly.
And then the corridor of eucalyptus and pine trees opened up into a murmuring concert area, a few thousand eclectic spirits quietly waiting in the fidgets of expectation. My gut felt this sigh of relief. This bubbling spirit of a great legend of jazz piano had not yet set foot on stage…:)
Herbie Hancock is one of the few remaining great legends of 20th century jazz. And we were so lucky to have him playing just down the road here in San Francisco as part of the 87th Stern Grove Festival, a free summer concert series.
At 84, Herbie’s spirit is going on 57 or so…strutting then skipping out on stage as he emerged from the curtain…just the tiniest hint of a stiffening body. Hancock’s first album was in 1962, and he has won an Academy Award at the Oscars and fourteen Grammy Awards. As Wikipedia writes:
Herbie Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles, using a wide array of synthesizers and electronics.
As the concert unfolded, I found myself thinking how since teenage days I’ve had the great luck to see several of the greats of the extraordinary era of musical development in jazz from the 1940s strictures to the wild experimentation of the 1970s - 1990s. Just in documenting life here, I had to list them out proudly, forgive me :)…: Sonny Rollins (Barbican in London, 1990s), Oscar Peterson (Royal Albert Hall in London, 2000s), Wynton Marsalis (Ronnie Scotts in London, 2000s), BB King (Mountain View Winery near Palo Alto 2010s), John Scofield (earlier this year at SF Jazz).
These immense creative, raw characters - and the spirit of how they play - moves me to the bone. They’ll inspire these moments of tingling skin and a knee that can’t stop jiggling fast enough, my head gently shaking with the beat and this light smile of bewilderment throughout.
When seeing one of the greats, I get these moments of pinching myself in disbelief of being meters away from someone you’ve listened to, read about, seen pictures of, since teenage years. And too, I’ll still think of how I missed many of the greats by just a few years. Several passed away during the few years in the 1990s when I was just starting to find jazz music captivating.
I can still picture where I was standing when I saw an ominous black and white photo of Miles Davis on the cover of Rolling Stone, in W.H. Smith in Leatherhead. “1996 - 1991” was darkly etched on the cover, heralding the Miles Davis Obituary inside. I had just started discovering Miles’ music, and there he was emblazoned on a magazine rack, those staring intentful eyes lifting from a magazine cover of his obituary.
Around the same time I was introduced to Stan Getz by my sax teacher, Peter Walker, with his most charismatic and rich of the tones of the tenor sax giants playing from 1950s to 1990s. I learnt that he too had passed early at 64 in 1991.
And a year later, in 1992, I can still picture the moment - a cold dark morning of autumn when we lived in Bookham - that I opened the inside door to the porch and saw a beige enveloped letter stamped The Royal Albert Hall. It lay flat at the top of a mil pile on the bristly brown door mat, and I already knew what it said. Just days earlier, I’d read of the other great of the 1940s - 1990s, the chipmunk-cheeked trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, being taken into hospital following a cancer diagnosis in the autumn of 1992. “Diz” died that January in 1993 at 75.
So, back to this summer of 2024, my eyes couldn’t believe driving past the Stern Grove corner on the way to Santa Cruz, and seeing Herbie Hancock listed on the arcing sign, in block letters, sponsored by SF Jazz. Somehow I’d missed this news in all the travels!
The young Herbie Hancock was playing with Stan Getz and Tony Bennett back in the 1960s, and with the Miles Davis Quintet in 1964 - 68, before breaking off in the last four decades to go beautifully rogue with electronic experimentation, cutting up piano playing styles between bebop, the vanguard of the fusion movement and acid jazz starting in the 1970s.
You’ll recognize this stunning 1985 live version of Canteloupe Island from Town Hall, New York, I bet! Go enjoy the ethereal driving funk trumpeting of Freddie Hubbard in this recording, and then Joe Henderson going beautifully nuts on tenor sax. And then a mid-life Herbie pulls out his characteristically manic drive on the piano, before recoiling back into the gentle lilt of the Canteloupe Island riff is so famous.
Getting tickets was a wild stroke of luck for another hour and a half that the belly of my viscera will never forget…(thank you Carolin!). Gazing up from the crowd and taking in this giant of the history of jazz - at 84 - swelled me with Sunday afternoon inspiration in life all over again :)
It felt such a privilege, a reminder of how our skills and spirit and perseverance just compounds when we just keep on, for decades, in whatever it is. In some tiny or bigger way, we’re all artists with a spirit to stoke. And not matter how hard, and how tiring, we must keep digging into the nooks of our awareness and curiosity to pull out that energy….!
Learn more about Herbie Hancock’s life and music:
I wrote about jazz also in a 2016 essay Branford Marsalis and a Fire Engine, in Grace Cathedral and a favorite book on jazz is Ted Gioia’s 2017 title How to Listen to Jazz.
Just a beautiful story and essay Kevin, so well done. And I particularly relished your eloquent conclusion. "It felt such a privilege, a reminder of how our skills and spirit and perseverance just compounds when we just keep on, for decades, in whatever it is. In some tiny or bigger way, we’re all artists with a spirit to stoke. And not matter how hard, and how tiring, we must keep digging into the nooks of our awareness and curiosity to pull out that energy….! " In total agreement with you on this. Imagine in 30 years if we just keep writing.