Press enter after choosing selection

Music

Music image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
February
Year
1975
OCR Text

Herbie Hancock & Lyman Woodard
at Hill Auditorium

The last time Herbie Hancock played at Hill Auditorium, his jazz was also electronic but far less funky. The concert was also far less attended than this one. In the two years since, keyboardist Hancock has helped synthesize a whole new music, becoming in the process the first "jazz" musician to reach tens of millions through record sales and even AM radio.
Funky jazz, jazz with a rhythm and blues, rock and roll underpinning and space keyboard/saxophone on top, can only somewhat describe Herbie 's music. Actually, the term jazz itself is becoming somewhat obsolete, as increasingly R&B/soul players blend in easily with jazz/rock artists like Hancock and Chick Corea. Some call the new blend a commercial sell-out on the part of the jazz artists, but really what's being accomplished is the transition of the mass audience into the age of jazz through the bridge of a 4/4 beat. I mean, here were all these college students at Hill cheering Benny Maupin's incredible sonaric soprano sax riffs. Five years ago he might have been booed off the stage.
At any rate, Herbie's performance was masterful, if a bit too short. While picking at a Fender-Rhodes piano, Mellotron, Yamaha organ, and Moog/ARP syntehsizers, Hancock oscillated sounds and rhythms to raise the roof of your mind. This music cooks, as the beats would say, bringing the soul to a boiling point. Too bad everyone had to sit down...
Herbie and the band, (aptly entitled) Headhunters, brought down the house on several occasions with improvised renditions of the group's current selections, most especially the ovation which greeted the hit "Chameleon." In addition to the fine instrumental work, the synthesized technology called forth the sounds of bird-calls and what seemed like a slew of violins on stage. Headhunters consists of Mike Clark on drums, Phil Summers on multi-percussion, Blackbird on guitar, Paul Jackson on bass and the aforementioned Maupin on tenor and soprano sax, formerly of the McCoy Tyner group and Sun Ra's Arkestra. Some of the music did seem a bit over-formalized, but within the obviously rehearsed transitions there was plenty of room to improvise. The next issue of the SUN will feature a full-length interview with Hancock, so enough said here...
Also appearing to open the bill Saturday night was the Lyman Woodard Organization, who hail from the Motor City. Lyman uses a traditional jazz organ instead of electronics, but he gets plenty of sound out of his chosen keyboard. The Organization is definitely highlighted by the outstanding sax work of Norma Bell, formerly with Stevie Wonder, and also includes Lorenzo Brown on percussion, Ron English on guitar and Leonard King on drums. But really, you have to hear Norma to believe her. The group also basically blends soul, R&B, rock and roll and jazz to make a new music. You should be hearing more from Lyman in the near future, including an upcoming release on the artist-controlled Strata label, "The Saturday Night Special."
It was a welcome evening at Hill Auditorium all in all, satisfying in particular because this was the first jazz concert, or really the first concert of black-inspired music of any kind, to be presented by UAC since September. In a town where R&B and jazz sells more records than in most places, and given the turn-out for Herbie, let's hope for more concerts of this genre in the months to come.
--David Fenton