Herbie Hancock Comes To Town

Herbie Hancock and his band at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH. Photo courtesy Jason Boucher.

It’s not every day one of the greatest musicians and performers in the history of modern jazz plays a club date in your city. But on this rare occasion, one certainly did. Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club on Congress Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire welcomed Herbie Hancock and his quartet to its stage this week. This massive event had been in the making since the Labrie brothers started building the club. In fact, Herbie was scheduled to be one of the very first performers at the venue before the pandemic put the brakes on their plans.

Nevertheless, as they closed down Congress Street for a short time to hoist Herbie’s oversized piano in through one of the large windows of the beautiful club, we knew we were all in for a real treat.

Herbie Hancock and his band brought electricity to the stage. They kicked off the show with an overture–a medley of music that, as Herbie put it, starts… in the future. They moved into Wayne Shorter’s Footprints, the track Actual Proof from his 1974 album Thrust, and then Herbie kicked it up a notch when he brought out his signature white Keytar. His band, consisting of Lionel Loueke on guitar, Terrence Blanchard on trumpet, James Genus on bass, and Justin Tyson on drums were energetic and each showed off their unique talent in various ways.

Herbie ended the show with one of his most popular tracks, Cantaloupe Island, and then brought out the Keytar one more time to rip through Watermelon Man.