Herbie Hancock's musical legacy as a jazz legend extends back over five decades, and that legacy continued on Friday night at the Minnesota Zoo Weesner Family Amphitheater in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Hancock assembled an incredibly talented band to back him on his current tour including guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist James Genus, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, and multi instrumentalist/producer (on additional keyboards and alto saxophone for this gig), Terrace Martin. Martin, is best known, as one of the producers of hip hop star Kendrick Lamar's 2015 record "To Pimp A Butterfly".
Hancock truly had an all-star group backing him up, and the rhythm section of Genus and Colaiuta were in the pocket the entire evening, while Loueke's wah wah accentuated guitar lines and solos were also memorable. The songs performed varied from throughout Hancock's long career and were vehicles for improvisation from Hancock and the rest of the ensemble. The set opened with "Overture (Fascinating Rhythm)" off of Hancock's 1998 release "Gershwin's World", a tribute to the great composer George Gershwin. Proceeding to really amp up the energy the band launched into "Actual Proof", a funky, buoyant composition from his 1974 "Thrust" record.
Where there was flute on the original record, this is where Hancock's electric keyboards and Terrace Martin's alto sax filled in the spaces. Then came a composition that yours truly heard for the first time, "Come Running To Me", recorded on the "Sunlight" album that was released in 1978. "Come Running To Me" evolved into a long form jam and again, Martin's saxophone layered into the spots on the original record where flutes and a brass section would be. Martin also provided the vocoder filtered vocals that are a signature of this track. "Come Running to Me" mellowed the pace of the show, after "Actual Proof".
Mid show, Hancock introduced the band to great applause, and in the second half, more was in store. It kicked off with "Come Running To Me", the composition with lyrics penned by Allee Willis from Hancock's 1978 "Sunlight" record, that to some, is more of a funk record than a straight up jazz album. For the album version, Hancock used a brass section along with the vocoder, and that brass section is prevalent in "Come Running To Me", featuring Bobby Shew, Maurice Spears, Robert O'Bryant, and Garnett Brown, plus a woodwind section featuring Ernest J. Watts, Fred Jackson Jr., Jack Nimitz, and David Willard Riddles.
There is a third ensemble in the original track as well, (strings), featuring Terry Adams, Roy Malan, Nathan Rubin, Linda Wood, and Emily VanValkenburgh. Herbie Hancock and Terrace Martin replicated the multilayered sound from the original record, onstage at the Weesner Amphitheater and the results were spectacular. "Secret Source" was next up, one of his more modern tunes. But, yours truly cannot find what record it was recorded on, and it doesn't relate to his separate album from 1976 entitled "Secrets".
But, for the finale of the concert, Hancock and the band knocked it out of the park with two of Hancock's most legendary numbers, standards of jazz including "Cantaloupe Island" from 1964's "Empyrean Isles", when he was still concurrently a member of Miles Davis' quintet. Then came, "Chameleon" from the 1973 "Headhunters" album, which is another masterpiece and one of the most well known jazz fusion records in the musical canon. These two numbers capped off a phenomenal evening of music that the audience surely will remember for a lifetime.
1. Overture
2. Actual Proof
3. Come Running to Me
4. Secret Source
5. Cantaloupe Island
Encore:
6. Chameleon
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