Indianapolis is getting a live date with a musician whose career runs straight through modern jazz history. Herbie Hancock will bring his band to the Murat Theatre at Old National Centre next Wednesday, just days after discussing Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard in a new local radio interview.
In an interview with WFYI's Cultural Manifesto, Hancock reflects on his work with both jazz giants. The station describes the pianist as a 14-time Grammy winner, Academy Award winner and NEA Jazz Master whose career has moved through acoustic jazz, funk and electronic music.
Hancock's official tour calendar lists Terence Blanchard on trumpet, James Genus on bass, Lionel Loueke on guitar and Jaylen Petinaud on drums for the Indianapolis stop. Live Nation lists the show for 7:30 p.m., giving local jazz fans a midweek appointment with a working band rather than a tribute act.
Hancock's Indianapolis Show Reaches Across Jazz Generations
The connection to Davis is more than a talking point. The National Endowment for the Arts says Davis asked Hancock to join his band in 1963, where Hancock spent five years helping reshape the role of the jazz rhythm section. The same biography notes that Hancock later revived the old Davis band as V.S.O.P., with Freddie Hubbard standing in for Davis.
For Indianapolis, Hubbard is not just another name from the jazz canon. The Indianapolis Jazz Foundation says the trumpeter grew up in the city, received early training at Arsenal Technical High School and played locally with members of the Montgomery family before leaving for New York.
That history gives Hancock's upcoming concert an unusually local echo: one of the city's defining jazz voices was part of the musical family Hancock is still carrying forward. With Blanchard and the rest of the announced quintet alongside him, next week's Murat performance looks less like a nostalgia stop than another chapter in Hancock's long-running experiment with what jazz can become.
