Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock performs this Friday at Buffalo Rocks The Harbor on August 6. This concert provides a unique opportunity to see one of the great living jazz legends for a mere $10 in advance/$20 day of the show tickets (compared to $60-$70 when he played the Rochester Jazz fest earlier this summer). Like so many of the great jazz musicians of the last fifty years, Herbie Hancock got his start playing with Miles Davis in what became known as the “second great” Miles Davis quintet(Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Hancock and Davis). On his own records Herbie Hancock showed his ability to compose accessible melodies with such songs as “Watermelon Man,” “Cantoloupe Island” and “Maiden Voyage.” The 70s saw Hancock move into funk and jazz fusion culminating with his classic album “Headhunters.” He ventured into technofunk in the 80 with his hit “Rockit” (for which he won a Grammy). In between these “pop” forays, Herbie Hancock has toured and recorded with jazz greats including Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Wynton and Branford Marsalis and, of course, Wayne Shorter. In 2009 Hancock won a grammy for “record of the year” with “the Joni Letters” – a beautiful and haunting set of interpretations of Joni Mitchell songs. He has recently released an album of pop songs called the “Imagine Project,” which finds Hancock playing with everybody and their brother from Pink to Dave Matthews to Derek Trucks.Like Herbie Hancock’s career, Friday’s concert promises to be a mixed bag of truly stellar acoustic jazz mixed with some jazz funk classics and probably some of the material from the last two albums. Reports from earlier stops on this tour say that he plays one set of real jazz and one set of pop rock with vocals. Pay attention to Tal Wilkenfield on electric bass. At the age of 24 she has already played with Jeff Beck, Chick Corea, Jeff Geoffrey Keezer and Jeff “Tain” Watts.
Virtuoso blues man Jonny Lang opens the show.
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