Herbie Hancock is often overwhelmed with astonishment.
Underneath stage lights, he sits at a piano and watches audiences burst into applause upon hearing opening notes — to songs he composed nearly 50 years ago.
It shocks him every time. And it happens all the time.
“‘How do these young people know this record?’” he said he often asks himself. “‘How many of them weren’t even born when I made those records?’
“But I guess they’ve somehow stood the test of time.”
(Yes, Mr. Hancock, indeed they have.)
Hancock, considered one of the best jazz musicians to play and influence the genre, and his All-Star Band will perform next Sunday at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk.
Hancock has 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year in 2008 for “River: The Joni Letters” and a lifetime achievement award in 2016. Mentioning Hancock in his autobiography, Miles Davis wrote: “Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.”
Hancock’s career began in childhood. As a child prodigy growing up in Chicago in the 1940s and ’50s, he performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. He took up jazz in high school, and, after double-majoring in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College, he worked for two years as a session musician before signing as an artist with Blue Note Records.