Herbie Hancock于1940年4月12日出生于芝加哥的一个音乐之家.Hancock七岁开始学习钢琴,两年以后就开始他的第一次公开演出.高中和大学时期他在一些半专业的乐团中演奏,偶尔有机会为一些造访的爵士乐手伴奏,其中就有Donald Byrd.1961年,Hancock第一次在纽约演出就是和Donald Byrd合作,后来自己建乐团时也和Donald Byrd合作过. 他声名鹊起获得广泛承认的是他加入Miles Davis的五重奏以后.他与Miles共同呆了五年多,在与Davis合作的后期,乐队开始演奏Jazz-rock的风格,Hancock对这种风格十分适应,1968年他自己组了一个六重奏追求自己的演奏观念.他们演奏Hancock原创的作品,乐队成为70年代早期最受欢迎和最具影响力Jazz-Rock乐队. 从1969年开始,Hancock广泛使用电钢琴和其他电子乐器,包括合成器.1973年迫于经济压力Hancock将他的乐队削减为四重奏,其中包括特色乐手Bennie Maupin.新乐队的风格还是Fusion,但这次更多偏向于Jazz-Funk.Hancock四重奏的首张专辑Head Hunters被刚萌芽的Disco乐界广泛接受而且赢得巨大的销量.整个七十年代其余的时间，Hancock的音乐始终关注于这个领域.期间他也制作了数张传统爵士专辑,其中有与Chick Corea一起的以及他自己乐队V.S.O.P.Hancock在音乐中展现了一种影响深远的创造性,为流行唱片工业设立了一个标准.音乐在形式上是理性的产物,但其内容却是无法缺少热情的, V.S.O.P.乐队的作品一向以其完整性、强烈的情绪和原创性着称.尽管Hancock最初的兴趣在传统爵士上,但他非常有技巧地将其音乐的探索推向其他的领域,创作出一组激动人心的作品.赫比 汉考克（Herbie Hancock）是一个真实的爵士乐偶像。他在音乐上的探索超越了种种局限以及风格类型的束缚，同时也保持了自己独一无二的声音。汉考克的成功在于他对音乐理念的拓展，正因为如此，在整个20世纪的音乐梦想家名册中，“赫比•汉考克”绝对是一个不容错过的名字。汉考克不仅改变了自己国家的音乐面貌，而且不断地以其独特的音乐形式震惊全世界的听众，尤其是在爵士乐领域，他扩展了人们的音乐视野，使听众对于爵士乐的理解随着时代不断进步。赫比 汉考克1940年出生于芝加哥。从音乐生涯一开始，汉考克就尝试涉猎所有领域，他对音乐转型有浓厚的兴趣。20世纪的最后30多年中，他的创作道路不断发生变化，在原声爵士、电子爵士、R&B每一次发展的过程中，都能看到汉考克的身影。回顾过去30多年，赫比•汉考克作为键盘演奏家和作曲家在艺术上所取得的成就，仅仅用“他是一位技艺高超的音乐家”来形容是远远不够的。汉考克令人欣羡地在商业与艺术之间找到了平衡，并且两者都取得了成功。在音乐生涯的每一个转折点上，汉考克大胆地进行每一次新的尝试，甚至是冒险，而其动机纯粹是他自己内心强烈的拓展创作空间的愿望。by Richard S. GinellHerbie Hancock will always be one of the most revered and controversial figures in jazz — just as his employer/mentor Miles Davis was when he was alive. Unlike Miles, who pressed ahead relentlessly and never looked back until near the very end, Hancock has cut a zigzagging forward path, shuttling between almost every development in electronic and acoustic jazz and R&B over the last third of the 20th century. Though grounded in Bill Evans and able to absorb blues, funk, gospel, and even modern classical influences, Hancocks piano and keyboard voices are entirely his own, with their own urbane harmonic and complex, earthy rhythmic signatures — and young pianists cop his licks constantly. Having studied engineering and professing to love gadgets and buttons, Hancock was perfectly suited for the electronic age; he was one of the earliest champions of the Rhodes electric piano and Hohner clavinet and would field an ever-growing collection of synthesizers and computers on his electric dates. Yet his love for the grand piano never waned, and despite his peripatetic activities all around the musical map, his piano style continues to evolve into tougher, ever-more-complex forms. He is as much at home trading riffs with a smoking funk band as he is communing with a world-class post-bop rhythm section — and that drives purists on both sides of the fence up the wall.Having taken up the piano at age seven, Hancock quickly became known as a prodigy, soloing in the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony at the age of 11. After studies at Grinnell College, Hancock was invited by Donald Byrd in 1961 to join his group in New York City, and before long, Blue Note offered him a solo contract. His debut album, Takin Off, took off indeed after Mongo Santamaria covered one of the albums songs, Watermelon Man. In May 1963, Miles Davis asked him to join his band in time for the Seven Steps to Heaven sessions, and he remained there for five years, greatly influencing Miles evolving direction, loosening up his own style, and upon Miles suggestion, converting to the Rhodes electric piano. In that time span, Hancocks solo career also blossomed on Blue Note, pouring forth increasingly sophisticated compositions like Maiden Voyage, Cantaloupe Island, Goodbye to Childhood, and the exquisite Speak Like a Child. He also played on many East Coast recording sessions for producer Creed Taylor and provided a groundbreaking score to Michelangelo Antonionis film Blow Up, which gradually led to further movie assignments. Having left the Davis band in 1968, Hancock recorded an elegant funk album, Fat Albert Rotunda, and in 1969 formed a sextet that evolved into one of the most exciting, forward-looking jazz-rock groups of the era. Now deeply immersed in electronics, Hancock added the synthesizer of Patrick Gleeson to his Echoplexed, fuzz-wah-pedaled electric piano and clavinet, and the recordings became spacier and more complex rhythmically and structurally, creating its own corner of the avant-garde. By 1970, all of the musicians used both English and African names (Herbies was Mwandishi). Alas, Hancock had to break up the band in 1973 when it ran out of money, and having studied Buddhism, he concluded that his ultimate goal should be to make his audiences happy. The next step, then, was a terrific funk group whose first album, Head Hunters, with its Sly Stone-influenced hit single, Chameleon, became the biggest-selling jazz LP up to that time. Now handling all of the synthesizers himself, Hancocks heavily rhythmic comping often became part of the rhythm section, leavened by interludes of the old urbane harmonies. Hancock recorded several electric albums of mostly superior quality in the 70s, followed by a wrong turn into disco around the decades end. In the meantime, Hancock refused to abandon acoustic jazz. After a one-shot reunion of the 1965 Miles Davis Quintet (Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, with Freddie Hubbard sitting in for Miles) at New Yorks 1976 Newport Jazz Festival, they went on tour the following year as V.S.O.P. The near-universal acclaim of the reunions proved: that Hancock was still a whale of a pianist; that Miles loose mid-60s post-bop direction was far from spent; and that the time for a neo-traditional revival was near, finally bearing fruit in the 80s with Wynton Marsalis and his ilk. V.S.O.P. continued to hold sporadic reunions through 1992, though the death of the indispensable Williams in 1997 cast much doubt as to whether these gatherings would continue.Hancock continued his chameleonic ways in the 80s: scoring an MTV hit in 1983 with the scratch-driven, proto-industrial single Rockit (accompanied by a striking video); launching an exciting partnership with Gambian kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso that culminated in the swinging 1986 live album Jazz Africa; doing film scores; and playing festivals and tours with the Marsalis brothers, George Benson, Michael Brecker, and many others. After his 1988 techno-pop album, Perfect Machine, Hancock left Columbia (his label since 1973), signed a contract with Qwest that came to virtually nothing (save for A Tribute to Miles in 1992), and finally made a deal with PolyGram in 1994 to record jazz for Verve and release pop albums on Mercury. Well into a youthful middle age, Hancocks curiosity, versatility, and capacity for growth showed no signs of fading, and in 1998 he issued Gershwins World. His curiosity with the fusion of electronic music and jazz continued with 2001s Future 2 Future, but he also continued to explore the future of straight-ahead contemporary jazz with 2005s Possibilities. An intiguing album of jazz treatments of Joni Mitchell compositions, called River: The Joni Letters, was released in 2007.