Herbie Hancock Trio
Recorded live at the Munich Summer Piano Festival

Piano: Herbie Hancock
Bass: Buster Williams
Drums: Al Foster

Director: Janos Darvas
Sound Engineer: Martin Wieland

DV-JHHTRIO

Picture Format: 16:9
Sound Format: LPCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1
Running Time: 58 minutes
Region Code: 2, 5
Booklet Languages: GB, DE, FR
Recording Date: July 1987


Hancock performed Mozart as an eleven year old with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a teenager he accompanied Coleman Hawkins, the father of the tenor saxophone. When Hard Bop trumpeter Donald Byrd was left without a pianist one day, the club owner recommended the completely unknown Hancock. He did such a good job that Byrd moved him to New York and let him live at his home.

His 1960s Blue Note records are a listening adventure that alone gives him a secure place in jazz history. They document a process of finding his musical self, in which Hancock broadened his musical language, with consequences for his contemporaries and followers. "Maiden Voyage" (1965), his most perfect album, tells about the sea and the elements: Dolphin Dance, the poetic tale of dancing dolphins, was copied often, but never reached. Here we have a version that although it takes more than 20 minutes manages never to lack in suspense from the impressionistic delicacy of the introduction to the rousing finale.

In spite of the huge success of the trio the search for records by the three will (excepting the mentioned bootleg) remain futile (for reasons unknown, certainly not for musical reasons). Hence the DVD in hand closes a huge gap in Herbie Hancock's extensive discography.