![]() Hard-panning instruments to the left and right channels creates an unnatural soundstage environment. All Rudy Van Gelder recordings from the 1950s and 60s have a certain period quality to them. With that many different versions revealing similar deficiencies it's easy to conclude that this record just wasn't very well recorded in the first place. I acquired each of these disks successively in a quest to find a truly good sounding copy of this date, and was disappointed each time. In another review of an expensive vinyl re-release of this record I wrote, "There is nothing to be gained by a first-class analogue pressing of a record that, sadly, was not recorded with the attention to sound quality that it deserved." In my record collection, the smeared quality of every instrument is prominent on a recent CD issue and the aforementioned double 45RPM LP, and an original 1965 vinyl copywhile less smearedsounds flat and dull. Unfortunately, Maiden Voyage also has a long-standing reputation for mediocre sound quality. It's a record every jazz fan should know. Featuring the great trumpet of Freddie Hubbard and the bracing tenor of George Coleman, the record is as good as any effort turned in by Hancock during that period. Lately, at festival appearances, the bandleader has been featuring trumpeter Terence Blanchard, whose “opera in jazz,” “Champion,” played at Boston Lyric Opera last month.Over the past forty-nine years there's been no shortage of ink spilled extolling the musical virtues of Herbie Hancock's 1965 recording, Maiden Voyage. Drummer Justin Tyson is the newest member. “The fact is that I’m a human being.” Being a musician, he says, is what he does, not what he is.Īt Jimmy’s, Hancock will feature most of his band of the last decade. I’m a friend, I’m an American citizen, I’m an African-American, I’m a citizen of the world. “To her, I’m her husband, not a musician. “And I had an epiphany about who I am,” he recalls. Having always identified as a musician, one day while chanting, he thought about his wife. “You find out how to turn poison into medicine, sorrow into joy,” he says. “Belief is something that grows from doing it and seeing that it works.”Īs Hancock testifies, Nichiren Buddhism “promotes looking at the world in different ways than most of us look at it,” merging the external world with one’s own individual being. “Oh, you don’t have to believe in it,” Williams said. It was his Buddhist practice, Williams replied. Later, Hancock asked the double bass player what had given him the strength to summon the performance. Some people who came up to us afterward were crying.” “There was something coming out of him that I’d never heard before. What Williams played that night to kick off the concert was astonishing, Hancock says. So he called a tune that began not with him but bassist Buster Williams. The night before, they’d taken advantage of several parties, and Hancock was feeling less than inspired. He had a vision one unlikely night in 1972 in a Seattle nightclub, he explains, after he and his bandmates arrived with less than two hours of sleep under their belts. This year marks his 50th year as a Buddhist practitioner. The lectures covered the full range of Herbie, including rule-breaking, embracing new technologies (he’s cut tracks on Fender Rhodes, the ARP Odyssey synthesizer, Moog, Mellotron, and keytar), and “The Wisdom of Miles Davis.” One talk focused on Buddhism’s role in creativity. He’s the chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at UCLA in 2014 he served as the Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry at Harvard University, delivering six lectures on the theme “The Ethics of Jazz.” ![]() Having credited his own musical mentors effusively over the years, Hancock has devoted much of his recent time to his own mentoring. “Better piano than the drums,” Hancock jokes. Hancock keeps a couple of toy pianos in his music room, where his grandson likes to plunk away, looking to his grandpa for cues. ![]() Dru, a toddler, is the son of Herbie and Gigi Hancock’s daughter, Jessica. Speaking on the phone, Hancock lights up when his lone grandchild walks into the room. ![]()
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