Graham Reid | | 3 min read
Among the many problems some people have with jazz is there seems to be no concept of “a band”.
Players shift around constantly and the leader's name on the album cover is the only constant over a career: every album, new players.
That's because in this demanding, improvised idiom – where the performer is simultaneously the composer – artists want to be challenged or find those who can support their vision.
Think of it this way: Taylor Swift's music would sound very different if she had Slash or Joe Bonamassa in her band.
So when Herbie Hancock plays at the Aotea Centre, Auckland on October 8, a lot of eyes and ears will be on his band as much as on the man at the keyboards.
So let's look at who will be sharing the spotlight.
Terence Blanchard (trumpet, keyboards)
New Orleans-born Blanchard, now 62, came through the same process as Wynton Marsalis, a longtime friend.
He studied under Wynton's dad Ellis among others and when Wynton left Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers he recommended Blanchard to take his spot. Blakey made him the band's musical director, a position he held for five years until he left to form his own band with some of the new generation of players called The Young Lions.
He has recorded more than 20 albums under his own name, more than a dozen as a sideman and about 40 soundtracks (among them a dozen or so for Spike Lee movies). He has won five Grammys and had a number of nominations, and in 2021 he was the first black composer to have an opera presented by the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
He has had a long relationship with Hancock who produced one of his Grammy nominated albums and is the artistic director at Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in California.
For what it's worth, I saw him play with his small group at a club in New York in the Nineties and he was superb.
All eyes on Terence.
Lionel Loueke (guitar)
If you saw Hancock at the Aotea Centre in 2007, Loueke (age 51) was in his band then.
Born in Benin, he was self-taught as a child but was accepted to a music school in Paris, then went to Berklee and was at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in the early 2000s.
He has recorded with Blanchard and Hancock (three albums with Herbie: Possibilities, River, The Joni Letters and The Imagine Project) but also a lengthy list of players from all genres, including Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Brian Blade, Angelique Kidjo, Kenny Garrett, Santana, Sting and many of The Young Lions. His major label debut was on Blue Note and he has appeared a number of times at Elsewhere and when we reviewed that previous Auckland concert we singled him out.
James Genus (bass)
From Virginia, the 58-year old Genus also studied under Ellis Marsalis and has had has an impressive career as an in-demand session player in New York.
He has recorded with Nat Adderley, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Benny Golson, Lee Konitz, Daft Punk, Ravi Coltrane and Don Pullen among many others.
He's also been a regular in the famous Saturday Night Live Band and sits in with The Roots when Mark Kelley isn't available.
He plays electric and upright bass. Really really well!
Jaylen Petinaud (drums)
Out of Brooklyn, Petinaud has – like all these members of Hancock's band – had a career outside the world of jazz, in his case on Broadway in theatre productions, musicals and dance companies.
He has worked with Blanchard for an opera, counts members of The Roots in his circle, has played with Common, Nella Rojas and Chien Chien among others.
He is as at home with writing/accompanying ballet and dance as he is before a jazz audience.
Expect brilliance because Herbie Hancock is only going to work with the best.
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Herbie Hancock and his band play Auckland's Aotea Centre, Tuesday October 8.
There is an interview with Hancock at Elsewhere here.
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