#Best music prodigy pbs movies professional#
#Best music prodigy pbs movies series#

In 1960, Herbie was discovered by trumpeter Donald Byrd. He also developed a passion for electronics and science, and double-majored in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College. He began playing jazz in high school, initially influenced by Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans.

As the immortal Miles Davis said in his autobiography, 'Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven't heard anybody yet who has come after him.'īorn in Chicago in 1940, Herbie was a child piano prodigy who performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. There are few artists in the music industry who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock. With an illustrious career spanning five decades and 14 Grammy® Awards, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni Letters, he continues to amaze audiences across the globe. Throughout his explorations, he has transcended limitations and genres while maintaining his unmistakable voice. Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. A member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hancock is currently in the studio at work on a new album. His memoirs, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, were published by Viking in 2014, and in February 2016 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

#Best music prodigy pbs movies series#

In 2014 he was was named the 2014 Norton Professor Of Poetry at Harvard University, completing his lectures series, 'The Ethics Of Jazz,' as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series for a period of six weeks. In 2011 Hancock was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, and in December of 2013, received a Kennedy Center Honor. He is a founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace (ICAP), and was recently given the 'Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres' by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon. Hancock serves as Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and as Institute Chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. Hancock received an Academy Award for his Round Midnight film score and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year for 'River: The Joni Letters,' and two 2011 Grammy Awards for the recently released globally collaborative CD, 'The Imagine Project.' Many of his compositions, including 'Canteloupe Island,' 'Maiden Voyage,' 'Watermelon Man' and 'Chameleon,' are modern standards. 'Rockit' and 'Future Shock' marked Hancock's foray into electronic dance sounds during the same period he also continued to work in an acoustic setting with V.S.O.P., which included ex-Miles Davis bandmates Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams.

As a member of the Miles Davis Quintet that pioneered a groundbreaking sound in jazz, he also developed new approaches on his own recordings, followed by his work in the 70s - with record-breaking albums such as 'Headhunters' - that combined electric jazz with funk and rock in an innovative style that continues to influence contemporary music. In addition to being recognized as a legendary pianist and composer, Herbie Hancock has been an integral part of every popular music movement since the 1960's.

#Best music prodigy pbs movies professional#

“They’re not gonna play that on the radio.Now in the sixth decade of his professional life, Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: at the forefront of world culture, technology, business and music. In the episode we hear archival tape of Richard reciting the next two lines in the chorus, “If you want it, you got it/ Tutti-frutti, good booty.” The lyrics, of course, could be interpreted as being about gay sex, laughs Deacon John Moore, a blues musician who recorded with Richard. Richard’s longtime keyboard player and friend Ronald “Ron” Jones adds that one day Richard jumped on the piano and played the “alop-bam-boom” riff and his producers asked about the hook they’d never heard before, even though the singer - who died in May 2020 at age 87 of bone cancer - had been using it for years while playing to Black audiences on the Chitlin’ Circuit. “‘Cause that’s all you gotta do is give Richard an audience, turn the lights on and show is on,” Blackwell says. “When we went into the Dew Drop Inn there was a piano… and that’s when I began to know and understand Little Richard,” says Specialty Records producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. In a Billboard exclusive clip from the show (see below), Little Richard’s bandmates and contemporaries talk about the origin story of “Tutti Frutti,” which was birthed at the raucous Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans.