‘A duet with AI’: jazz icon Herbie Hancock, 86, talks tech, getting older and Miles Davis
He may have 14 Grammy Awards and an Academy Award under his belt, but Herbie Hancock isn’t ready to stop working just yet
By Mary Carole McCauley
At 86, Hancock has been performing music and composing it for a very, very long time. Seventy-four years to be exact, if you count the former child prodigy’s debut playing piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1952.
Along the way, he has won numerous accolades, including 14 Grammy Awards – and in particular the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. He even picked up an Academy Award in 1987 for composing the best original score for the film Round Midnight.
Over the decades, he has discovered path-breaking musicians and influenced others; in 2013, Snoop Dogg credited Hancock with “creating hip-hop”.
Moreover, Los Angeles-based Hancock is still touring and will perform at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore for one night only on July 28 under the auspices of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and its jazz-loving music director, Jonathon Heyward. Hancock will perform with his own band, not Heyward or the BSO.