Herbie Hancock & The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Festival Theatre
Sat 28 April
Season closed



While the term 'legend' is much overused, it fits Herbie Hancock perfectly. Hancock played with the Chicago Symphony as a child, but it was the period playing and composing with Miles Davis in the 'sixties which cemented his place in jazz history.

Hence, it was no surprise to see a full house at the Festival Theatre to see the great man in concert with his quartet and the ASO under the baton of guest conductor Robert Sadin.

After Sadin led the orchestra through a pedestrian arrangement of Bach's Chorale, Prelude and Fugue (Das alte Jahr vergangen ist), the great man emerged and captivated the audience immediately with a fiery performance of Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm followed by elegant renderings of Gershwin's Lullaby and Ellington's Cottontail.

Guitarist Lionel Loueke then lifted the bar even higher with an African inspired vocalise, wah and assorted pedal work-out that somehow morphed into Gershwin's second Prelude, only to be upstaged by an hypnotic modal take on the ballad Someone To Watch Over Me. The first half finished with a raucously funky account of St Louis Blues wherein the brass section superbly underpinned Stevie Wonder's arrangement.

Hancock's own compositions featured in the second half, beginning with the classic Maiden Voyage and Headhunters' synthesizer-based Actual Proof interposed with fellow Davis alumni Wayne Shorter's Nefertiti.

The Ray Charles' inspired Georgia On My Mind would have been the perfect bookend to the night, but Hancock went one better with an almost religiously introspective solo encore Dolphin Dance that sent the audience home in a state of pure Zen.

Not everything went smoothly. The first half was beset with sound problems and throughout, the orchestra seemed more comfortable with Hancock than the conductor. In fact it just goes to show that a very fine arranger does not necessarily a good conductor make. However, the virtuosic accompanying trio of Loueke, bassist Nathan East and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums were simply magnificent.

As we left an usher commented that she had never seen an audience leave so quietly and in such pure rapture!

Brett Allen-Bayes & Mal Byrne