Herbie Hancock
Tulsa PAC
April 7, 2024
It was a privilege to watch Herbie Hancock cavort around a stage with a keytar. I hope you got to see it too. His show at the PAC was a powerhouse example of the genre-defining and -breaking prowess he’s wielded over jazz for decades. The man still has more energy than some 30-year-olds I know, and he’s 83.
When the band opened with a lot of slow, lush, easy stuff, I was concerned that the show was going to be “Weekend at Herbie’s”: Hancock as an old, beleaguered, famous body to have on stage, the concert as a way to show off the extracurricular musicians. Within about ten minutes, the band dispelled that fear. Along with guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist James Genus and drummer Trevor Lawrence, Hancock worked his way through two hours of fluid, feverish jazz that was somehow both free and perfectly formed.
On guitar, Loueke consistently pulled off tremendous solo work, at one point linking a pulsing rhythmic solo with a tongue-clicking technique derived from Xhosa, one of the languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. The result, combined with fantastic pedal effects on both the guitar and his voice, sounded like five musicians let loose on the funkiest Mario music MIDI controller you’ve ever heard. Lawrence and Genus were no less fantastic on drums and bass, respectively, each taking solo moments in which they blew the crowd away.