Not Notes, but Music at 'Herbie's World'

[7/4]

June 24, 2006

Music Review | JVC Jazz Festival

Not Notes, but Music at 'Herbie's World'

By BEN RATLIFF

The final stretch of “Herbie’s World,” Herbie Hancock’s hybridized JVC Jazz Festival concert at Carnegie Hall on Friday night, was as good as one could hope for. Following three other setups, the pianist came on stage with an acoustic quartet. It was Mr. Hancock, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, the bassist Dave Holland, and the drummer Brian Blade. The performance only lasted half an hour, but they played an enormous amount of music.

Not notes, but music. This was the abstract, volatile end of the jazz mainstream, perfectly well-practiced and coherent: these same four musicians toured together two years ago, and Mr. Hancock and Mr. Shorter helped redefine jazz’s mainstream during the mid-1960s with Miles Davis, and later in other projects.

There were three tunes, technically speaking, but they kept changing color and character. In just about every bar there was a mystery door leading to some striking new idea. Mr. Blade kept changing his entire rhythmic bearing: not just the patterns, but the weights, shapes and gestures of his playing. Mr. Hancock played with taste and restraint, gapping his phrases and finessing the harmony. Mr. Shorter was just on. Not broken-water-main on--until the very end of Mr. Holland’s “Pathways,” when he played long, fast, swiping phrases on soprano saxophone over a band rhythm that changed between five- and six-beat patterns-- but fully lucid and epigrammatic. Mr. Holland, off and on, returned to ostinato figures—few bassists play them more authoritatively—but otherwise there was no feeling of anyone accompanying anyone else. They were making the best kind of counterintuitive music: playing hard, sounding soft. At Carnegie’s sonically sensitive Isaac Stern auditorium, this was doubly wise.

The evening started with another short set of wise and concise playing--a little less abstract and more structured, but still powerful. It was a rare trio of Mr. Hancock, the bassist Ron Carter, and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. Mr. Hancock and Mr. Carter have played together a great deal in the past, often with Tony Williams as drummer; the three of them played together on a few records with other musicians. Nobody seems to recall them having worked as a trio before. They played Mr. Hancock’s “Toys,” and a version of the standard “I Thought About You,” its chord changes intact but each segment of the melody radically changed; the harmonic communication between Mr. Hancock, with his reinterpretive new lines, and Mr. Carter, with sparse, well-chosen notes, was something special. Mr. DeJohnette played beautifully, both for the band and for the hall, leaving sudden open spaces.

In a surprise, they were joined on Mr. Hancock’s “One Finger Snap” by the saxophonist Michael Brecker, who has been ill for the last year with MDS, or Myelodisplastic Syndrome, a bone marrow disease. Mr. Brecker looked slightly tired, but otherwise gave it his all, playing long, tumultuous lines at full strength through the song. There was a set of piano duets on the Hancock standards “Maiden Voyage” and “Footprints”--as well as a short and heady free improvisation--between Mr. Hancock and the Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and it was a remarkable exercise in keyboard touch. Mr. Rubalcaba can hit keys so quickly and lightly that it sounds as if he’s only plucking a string; it made it easier to appreciate Mr. Hancock’s softer, thicker sound.

Mr. Hancock’s new quintet, taking up about a third of the concert in the middle, was a disappointment. It’s hard to stay current, especially when you’re a virtuoso; great technique and popular culture don’t mix easily, but Mr. Hancock doesn’t stop trying. This was a case of good musicians and bad aesthetics. Compared with the opening and closing sets, the set was weighed down by notes, tumbling from the five-string electric bassist Matthew Garrison and the young violinist Lili Haydn (known for her work with rock performers), and—slightly less so—from the guitarist Lionel Loueke. Mr. Loueke sang through an octave-splitter; Ms. Haydn sang a new-agey, original pop ballad in a tremulous, breathy voice called “Unfolding Grace”; then the electric bassist Marcus Miller joined the group for some dense, glutinous funk on Mr. Hancock’s “Chameleon.”

[bertrand]

'Footprints' is one of my favorite Hancock compositions.

Bertrand.

[7/4]

'Footprints' is one of my favorite Hancock compositions.

Bertrand.

Well yeah...a great tune.

[fasstrack]

I get the idiot of the year award. I had a ticket. 40 f'ing dollars. Shit. I had it in my calendar and I was tired last night and spaced. I remembered when I saw a listing in the Times, but it was 10 PM (do you know where your brain cells are?....) by then.

I'm glad, though, to hear Mr. Brecker was well enough to play. That's very good news, and a damn sight better than what I was hearing.

Edited June 25, 2006 by fasstrack

[fasstrack]

BTW, don't believe a word of that charlatan Ben Ratliff about Herbie's working group. He says the same thing about any group with electric instruments, especially bass (God forbid it should soil a jazz group). He ran almost that review verbatim at a magical Wayne Shorter concert in '98. I was there and it was a phenomenal evening but the all-knowing one ripped it to shreds in his 'review'. Ben, stop annoying people.

I tell you, all the wrong people get paid in this world....

Edited June 25, 2006 by fasstrack

[Lazaro Vega]

Isn't "Footprints" Wayne's tune?

Howard Mandel wrote a different article all together about this concert...will have to find it to post here....

[fasstrack]

Howard Mandel wrote a different article all together about this concert...will have to find it to post here....

About last week's concert or the one in '98? He's also on my suspect list for writing wrong info about the Jazz Cultural Theater on the notes to David X. Young's Jazz Loft and never even bothering to do the simplest research after the fact to correct it.

My solution would be to put Ben, Howard, and the Great Genius Stanley Crouch together in an isolation chamber. They'd have no choice then but to bore each other to death and leave the rest of us alone.

Edited July 2, 2006 by fasstrack

[robviti]

From the New York Press

Vol 19 - Issue 26 - June 28-Jul 4, 2006

THE HERBIE PROBLEM

When jazz becomes pretty but fails to astonish

By Howard Mandel

Pianist Herbie Hancock has recorded one perfectly sublime jazz album (Maiden Voyage) and a couple of dozen significant others. He’s composed two simple, irresistibly catchy tunes (“Watermelon Man,” “Chameleon”) that will be jam session favorites as long as there are fake books and garage bands, plus the first mainstream single to feature scratching (“Future Shock”) and the first jazz sample (from “Cantaloupe Island”) featured in a huge crossover hit (“Cantaloop” by U.K. DJs Us3). He helped galvanize Miles Davis’ exploratory ’60s quintet, popularized the Fender Rhodes electric piano and delved deeply into synthesizers while never abandoning the classic grand.

So why are his concerts so dull?

Perhaps the Herbie problem is mine, not his: The nearly full house June 23 at Carnegie Hall for his career-celebrating “Herbie’s World” concert in the JVC Jazz Festival New York gave the man and his star-studded ensembles several standing ovations.

People listened closely as Hancock, in trio with fellow Miles alumni Ron Carter (bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums), toyed with his ’60s song, “Toys,” and the ballad, “I Thought About You.” They rightly cheered the surprise guest appearance of Michael Brecker, whose medical travails have not impaired his rigorous tone and technique as demonstrated by his slashing mastery of Hancock’s difficult “One Finger Snap.”

The audience was kindly receptive to Hancock’s quintet comprising West African guitarist Lionel Louke, whose style has a delicate quality, and violinist Lili Haydn, who also sang a treacly composition of her own. Things picked up a bit when electric bassist Marcus Miller joined the ensemble to loudly thumb the “Chameleon” theme, which these days seems more chunky than funky. We sat expectantly through three impressionistic, improvisational piano duos by Hancock with Cuban expatriate romanticist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Cheers arose again for the concert-ending quartet of Hancock with his old friend Wayne Shorter on saxes, estimable Dave Holland on bass and game Brian Blade on drums.

The crowd wanted an encore; everyone but my date and I seemed to leave the concert buzzing. So am I jaded, or what?

Yes, I’m jaded, and I also have high expectations. Over the past 40 years Hancock has exemplified jazz’s ability to be both smart and popular. He’s one composer/performer capable of genuine lyricism, daring breakthroughs and uncondescending use of America’s gospel-blues tropes to create internationally accessible, engaging music. I attend Hancock’s performances over and again, hoping he’ll pull off this trick, however disappointing the last try was.

Two pianos stirred by virtuosi such as Hancock and Rubalcaba can’t possibly sound bad in a concert hall like Carnegie, but they are challenged to sound meaningful. Few piano duettists really lock in with each other. Without evident preparation, relying on spontaneous impulses, Hancock and Rubalcaba offered up brooding reverie, unanchored single-note runs and cloudy dissonances. Better they dish it one at a time.

Where is Hancock as leader of this gang? Why can’t or won’t he make a statement, rally his troupe to focus its expression, reach out to the listeners, wrap us in the music and take us higher? If jazz doesn’t do that, if it only wants to be admired, it’s ready for burial now.

Has Herbie Hancock lost his edge? Physically fit, active and articulate, maybe he's too comfortable. Chilled. A California Buddhist, multiple Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master. Fulfilled. Yet ambition, conflict and desire have always lent jazz excitement.

If the imperative in Herbie's World now is "make it pretty," and you've spent $40 to $100 for Carnegie tix to hear him, you're going to want to like it. But jazz should be hot as well as cool, and always new. Astonish us, Mr. Hands! Dig in and let rip. Next time.

[Lazaro Vega]

Thank you Dr. Jive, that's the one I read....

Had a chance to hear Herbie's quartet a few years back with Craig Handy, tenor; Dave Holland, bass; and I think the drummer's name was Gene Jackson, he'd worked in Dave Holland's band previously, and the concert was great. He played "Half Nelson," amongst "Cantalope Island" and his other hits.

But I see the point of Howard's observation, and appreciate he said he was in the minority of the concert goers.

Edited July 2, 2006 by Lazaro Vega