Herbie Hancock
River: The Joni Letters (Verve)
2007-09-26
By Eugene Holley, Jr.
“Chameleon” is the title of one of Herbie Hancock’s many hits. And it also describes his gift of reinvention as an influential Blue Note pianist and member of Miles Davis’s classic combos; a jazz-fusion founding father with the group Head Hunters; the brilliant composer of movie soundtrack Round Midnight, a hip-hop friendly visionary with his futuristic, robot video “Rockit,” and in recent years, an inventive interpreter of popular and classical music.
On his new CD River: The Joni Letters, Hancock channels Joni Mitchell: arguably the most introverted, and imaginative singer/songwriter/lyricist of the past four decades, whose highly autobiographical and visual music provides fertile soundscapes for improvising musicians to explore. Hancock and Mitchell first worked together on her brilliant, but misunderstood 1979 album Mingus, and this project debuts at the same time Mitchell releases her new recording, Shine. Hancock’s date is co-produced by Mitchell’s creative partner and ex-husband Larry Klein. The keyboardist is supported by ex Davis bandmates, bassist Dave Holland, tenor/soprano saxophonist and longtime Mitchell co-hort Wayne Shorter, along with Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, and Sting drummer Vinnie Colaiuta.
Shorter’s Icarusian improvisations, Loueke’s spare guitar accompaniment, Holland’s steady basslines, Colaiuta’s finessed drumwork, buoyed by Hancock’s profound and poetic pianistic inventions and dimensions illuminated the CD’s instrumentals; “Both Sides Now,” and two songs crucial to Mitchell’s development, the Duke Ellington-composed, Billie Holiday-sung ballad “Solitude,” and Shorter’s elliptical, mid-sixties composition “Nefertiti.” But the multi-generational, mix of vocalists steal the show. Norah Jones’s Texas Twang spices up “Court and Spark,” and Tina Turner’s uncharacteristically edgy delivery turns “Edith and the Kingpin” into her own painful, private dance. Corrine Bailey Rae offers a contrasting vision of youth and innocence of the Christmas-themed title track. The Brazilian-born Luciana Souza sings “Amelia” with reverence and restraint, and on “The Jungle Line” Leonard Cohen delivers an equally understated spoken word recitation of Mitchell’s lyrics, with Hancock’s sly and sleek piano punctuations. On her only vocal track, Mitchell’s distinctive Saskatchewan simmered contralto paints a nostalgic picture of her parent’s World War II era courtship on “Tea Leaf Prophecy.”
Like an aural archaeologist, Herbie Hancock decodes the harmonic, melodic, and lyrical hieroglyphics of Joni Mitchell’s iconoclastic musical language, offering new interpretations for the twenty first century.
www.herbiehancock.com
www.ververecords.com
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