ARTICLE: Music legend Herbie Hancock dives into AI while his all-star album with Kendrick Lamar is revamped

Genre-leaping keyboard legend Herbie Hancock has an update for fans eagerly anticipating his new album — originally due out in 2020 — featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, West African guitar innovator Lionel Loueke, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, electric bassist Thundercat, producer Flying Lotus and such hip-hop mainstays as Common and Snoop Dogg.

“I tried to complete that record several times. But before I could finish it, I didn’t like it anymore and had to start over from scratch,” said Hancock, an Oscar-winning film composer, 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipient and 14-time Grammy Award-winner for his jazz, R&B and pop recordings.

Hancock’s music over the years has ranged from mainstream and cutting-edge jazz to funk, Latin, pop, folk, techno, classical, Afro-futurism, hip-hop and beyond. In 2008, he became the first jazz artist since 1964 to win Album of the Year honors at the Grammy Awards. His historic victory came for his lovingly crafted Joni Mitchell homage, “River: The Joni Letters,” on which Mitchell is a guest singer.

Hancock will perform Thursday at San Diego’s Balboa Theater with a talent-packed band that includes saxophonist Chris Potter and trumpeter Terence Blanchard, himself a two-time Oscar-nominated composer and eight-time Grammy-winner.

The performance — presented by La Jolla Music Society — is the second event in the nonprofit arts organization’s nine-concert jazz piano mini-festival, which runs Wednesday through April 21. Among the other artists in the festival’s lineup are Japan’s Hiromi, San Diego’s Mike Wofford and Kamau Kenyatta, and Cuba’s Dayramir Gonzalez and his band, Habana EnTRANCé.

The nonprofit society also presented Hancock’s most recent concert here at the Balboa Theater in 2019. In a Union-Tribune interview previewing that performance, the Chicago-born music maverick indicated his new album was nearing completion. But Hancock’s constantly restless artistic spirit, coupled with the 2020 pandemic shutdown, led him to reevaluate things in a major way.

“It’s gone through a lot of doorways, let’s say,” he said of what will be his first new album since his all-star, globe-leaping “The Imagine Project” in 2010.

“I would think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re thinking about releasing one or two (songs) either this year or next. I’ve recorded a lot of stuff!”

‘A different time’

Hancock spoke recently for more than an hour from his Los Angeles office and recording studio. He laughed appreciatively when reminded that Duke Ellington — when asked what inspired him to compose and record — famously responded: “Give me a deadline!”

“He was absolutely right and that’s what it used to be like for me, all the time,” Hancock said. “I’d have deadlines and things had to be done by a certain day — bam, bam, bam! — and that’s how it had been throughout my whole career.”

But not anymore.

“The pressure isn’t on me the same way it was in the past, when I was signed to different record labels,” Hancock affirmed. “Now that I’m not formally signed, I make deals with labels to share the ownership of the records I make. It’s different than when records were two sides on an LP. Now, you can release one or two songs at a time, and — eventually — make what is essentially an album.

“This is a different time and a different age, with different ways of doing things. Artists can sign up to put their music on a streaming service, and — if I don’t know how that works — I can get other people to handle that for me.”

In Hancock’s case, only time constraints prevent him from learning how to stream his own music, if not launch his own streaming service.

A double-major in music and engineering, he was barely 21 when he graduated from Iowa’s Grinnell College in 1960. That was only two years before the release of his 1962 debut album, the aptly named “Takin’ Off” — and just 10 years after he made his debut as a piano soloist with the Chicago Symphony at the age of 11.

Hancock went on to write such classic songs as “Watermelon Man,” “Cantaloupe Island,” “Maiden Voyage,” “The Eye of the Hurricane,” “Speak Like a Child,” “The Sorcerer,” “Chameleon,” “Actual Proof,” “Rockit” and a good number more.

International Jazz Day

One of the first and most prominent artists to come from the jazz world who embraced electric keyboards, synthesizers and music software, he heads the UC Los Angeles-based Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. As a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Goodwill Ambassador, he is the founder and host of International Jazz Day, which is now in its 13th year and is celebrated in more than 190 countries.

This year’s anchor city is Tangier, Morocco, where Hancock will perform and speak. International Jazz Day will culminate with an All-Star Global Concert on April 30 at Tangier’s Palace of Arts & Culture. Musicians from more than 15 countries will perform during the concert, which will stream on YouTube, Facebook, jazzday.com and the websites of the United Nations and UNESCO.

“The important thing is to present something to people that’s going to inspire them and encourage them. I try to be in the moment, always, no matter where I am or who I’m (playing) with,” said Hancock, who on Aug. 14 will perform at the Hollywood Bowl with his pioneering band, Headhunters. It will be his first appearance with the group — which features saxophonist Bennie Maupin and drummer Harvey Mason Jr. — in 50 years.

His array of musical partners over the years has been almost almost dizzying in its diversity. They have included everyone from Miles Davis, Mongo Santamaria, Joni Mitchell, Chick Corea, Tina Turner and Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso to Bootsy Collins, Brazilian vocal legend Milton Nascimento, Ireland’s The Chieftains, former San Diego sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, opera star Kathleen Battle and Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang.

While Hancock’s collaborators change from year to year, his interest in technology and the inner workings of things has been a constant. Or, as he put it in a 1984 U-T interview: “I’m a tinkerer who likes to know how things tick. I always carry around screwdrivers and pliers and things. I’m the guy who will go over to your house and, if the color on your TV is not right, I will make it right.”

In this digital age, does he still carry screwdrivers and pliers? And what is the latest thing with which he’s been tinkering?

“AI!” Hancock replied, laughing heartily.

“I’m interested in artificial intelligence and where it’s gonna go — and the possible dangers of it. But even when I was just 5, I would try to take apart a clock to see how it worked. I got in a lot of trouble with my father when I tried to take apart the Lionel electric train he had bought me!”

The use of AI in music, film and other mediums is a matter of increasing controversy for artistic creators. But Hancock, who turned 84 on Friday, is interested in AI for multiple reasons.

“Well, first of all, I’m interested in it as a human being,” he stressed. “Because that’s what I am. I play music, but what I am is a human being. I’m concerned about what happens to us as human beings, not just as musicians, and to work. What’s going to happen with a lot of the jobs we have now?

“That’s a big concern, because a lot of jobs in a lot of fields will be taken over. It happened with the industrial age and with blacksmiths when the automobile came in. Now, we’re in the age of technology. Every field will be impacted, including education, and the arts are also at risk. So, how do we solve those issues that most of us will be facing? These are concerns of mine.”

Like many musicians whose tours evaporated overnight because of the pandemic lockdown that began in early 2020, Hancock found himself with unplanned time on his hands. It was then that he took a deep dive into AI and watched countless videos online about new virtual instruments and music technology.

Future shock

“Not that many years ago, if you wanted to play a keyboard, you had to go out and buy a physical keyboard,” noted Hancock, who happily discussed some of his favorite music software at length.

“I don’t know how AI will all turn out, and I don’t feel comfortable predicting. But I am very interested. And I do have some things that are not commitments, but — how do I say this? — on the table for connecting me with AI and its use in musical endeavors.”

Is he worried that AI could rob some musicians of their livelihoods?

“Well,” he replied, “I have a tendency to look for the positive aspects. And — although it hasn’t really happened yet — the potential for (AI) making things better in the world is what I’m looking forward to and believe in. But the pathway of getting there is going to be through a default line of human beings.

“Machines don’t have ethics because they are not human, right? They don’t have that human experience and are not made of what we are made of. They don’t have a heart, so to speak. … I believe AI will have the potential to teach us ethics and help us become better human beings. Because humans, men and women, birthed AI, so to speak. If we treat AI like our children and ‘raise’ AI mindfully, it will have an understanding of ethics and treating people with kindness.

“Because human beings have have been killing each other since the beginning of time. We’ve been killing our own species. How insane is that? It makes no sense at all. And we’re still doing it, here in the 21st century. We have to learn to become better human beings, because the real problem is people, not AI.”

Standing the test of time

In 2022, Hancock was the only jazz artist to perform at Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, two of the world’s biggest annual rock-music festivals. He was 82 at the time and earned rave reviews.

His Glastonbury festival performance was, a reviewer for The Independent newspaper in England wrote, “so joyful and effortless it (was) as welcome as a burst of sunshine.”

A reviewer for the newspaper The Telegram was equally effusive, writing: “Nearly 40 years have passed since Hancock released ‘Future Shock,’ an album many consider a vital ancestor of hip-hop, and yet his music — rich, layered and transportive — sounded as timeless as ever.”

Now, at 84, Hancock shows no signs of slowing down, a point bolstered by the fact that his busy schedule now requires two managers to maintain. And his memory appears to be as sharp as ever, even though he claimed otherwise.

During the course of this interview, Hancock readily cited his favorite compositions by Stravinsky, including 1945’s Ebony Concerto. He readily recalled exactly when (May 1968) he began playing the then-brand new Fender Rhodes electric piano shortly before concluding his tenure in Miles Davis’ famed quintet. And he happily recounted his first major experience as a jazz pianist— at the age of 20 — backing sax legend Coleman Hawkins.

“Right after I graduated from Grinnell in 1960, I was working at the post office and got a job playing with Coleman for two weeks at a Chicago club called Cloisters,” Hancock recalled.

“Louis Taylor, the drummer, recommended me for the gig and I was thrilled! But I was still working delivering mail for the post office, where I’d also had a job during summer breaks from college. I had to be at the post office at 8 a.m. each day, after playing in the club with Coleman until 4 a.m. After a couple of days doing this, I got sick and got a cold, and it got worse. Louis told me to quit the post office, and I did.”

Hancock laughed.

“This is a funny story!” he said. “When I quit the post office, they said: ‘Hancock, you better keep this job with all its government benefits. You’re going to regret quitting.’

“Years later, after I’d made records and led my own bands, there was a jazz festival in Chicago and my band was headlining. When we went to do our soundcheck, there was a guy sweeping the floor who let us in. He said: ‘Are you Herbie Hancock?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘You used to work at the post office, didn’t you?’ I said: ‘How did you know that?’ And he said: ‘I used to work there, too!’ He worked there when I worked there.”

Hancock laughed again.

“So, I gave him a big hug and we started laughing. I never did go back to the post office. As a matter of fact, that’s what the guy said to me: ‘You never came back’!”

The art of improvisation

Herbie Hancock has long been regarded as a master of improvisation whose melodic ingenuity and harmonic sophistication are in a league of their own. Here is how he explains his approach to spontaneous artistic creation.

“The way I look at music sometimes when we’re improvising — that is, what may go through my head at a certain moment, like in a fraction of a second — might be: ‘What would happen if I did this?’ It might be a certain chord or some idea I might be ready to bring out of my subconscious.

“My M.O. is to try it, to go ahead and do it. If I don’t feel satisfied with what I did, then — in the next instant — I have to make an attempt to make it work with what I play right after that. It’s sort of a way to ‘play with danger,’ in a manner of speaking.

“But on the other hand, it could just lead me to use that sense of courage in trying to do other things, musically, to be in the moment, always, and to try not to avoid that impulse to play with danger. Because it’s kind of natural to me, and it encourages me.”

When Herbie met Lang Lang

A classically trained pianist who embraced jazz as a teenager, Herbie Hancock has long welcomed musical challenges. But he was intimidated by his “Rhapsody in Blue” piano duet with classical-music star Lang Lang at the Grammy Awards in 2008.

“At first,” Hancock recalled, “I turned it down, like: “No way!’ I finally decided to do it and I practiced three hours a day to get up to speed. Some years later, Lang Lang and I played ‘Rhapsody’ with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And some years after that, I played it by myself with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“Lang Lang and I later went on tour together and I learned another piece that I played with him, a concerto for two pianos. I had to learn it right and we had a fantastic time. I played it pretty straight, but there were some areas where I felt like: ‘This is a perfect spot for improvisation.’ Lang Lang was just fascinated I could do that, because he had no concept about what improvisation was about. Then, he started doing a few improv things himself. He’s wonderful.”

Lang Lang is equally enthused about Hancock.

“I love Herbie — he’s my favorite musician,” the Chinese pianist told the Union-Tribune a few weeks ago in an interview with writer Beth Wood.

“One of the greatest moments for me was playing with him at the Grammys and doing tours together all over the world. I learned so much from him. He taught me how to have the most beautiful touch on the keys and how to integrate improvisation with the pieces I was playing. He can improvise with any piece I know how to play. He’s a tremendous talent and a tremendous human being.

“Herbie really taught me how to improvise, although — compared to him — I haven’t done anything. But compared to myself, I improved a lot. What he can do is out of this world. I really hope we’ll catch up with each other soon and play together again.”

Herbie Hancock and his band, featuring Terence Blanchard and Chris Potter

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: Balboa Theater, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown

Tickets: $85

Online: ticketmaster.com

La Jolla Music Society’s jazz piano mini festival

All events take place in venues at La Jolla Music Society’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla.