It’s “time for Herbie Hancock: for the” last of the three concerts at Lazzaretto, the “summer edition of Bergamo Jazz will bid farewell, on Friday, July 18 (9:30 PM), to the” highly anticipated return to the city, after over 50 years, of one of the brightest stars in the global music firmament. The renowned American pianist and keyboardist will perform leading a band including trumpeter Terence Blanchard, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist James Genus, and drummer Jaylen Petinaud, all musicians of proven talent. The “event, organized by the Donizetti Theater Foundation and the International Piano Festival of Brescia and Bergamo to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Filippo Siebaneck’s passing, is supported by BCC Milano and is part of the series of events at Lazzaretto promoted by the” Department of Culture of the City of Bergamo.

Eighty-five years old and not feeling it, 14 Grammy Awards, a vast discography that has always transcended styles and genres, prestigious collaborations, soundtracks for important films: all this and more makes Herbie Hancock one of the most representative artists of over 60 years of modern music history, a true living legend, a free spirit who, with his music, or rather his many musics, has indelibly marked the sonic imagination from the 1960s onwards.

His concert on March 17, 1972, at the Donizetti Theater is rightfully included in the annals of Bergamo’s jazz festival: at the time, thirty-two years old, Herbie Hancock won over the audience with the electrifying electroacoustic blend of his Mwandishi sextet, performing during the festival’s opening night alongside trumpeter Eddie Henderson, trombonist Julian Priester, saxophonist and clarinetist Bennie Maupin, bassist Buster Williams, and drummer Billy Hart. Just this past March, for Bergamo Jazz 2025, Eddie Henderson and Billy Hart returned to the Donizetti stage as members of The Cookers.

Born in Chicago in 1940, Herbie Hancock was the typical child prodigy: at just 11 years old, he played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He approached jazz by listening to two very different pianists, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. His first engagement that brought him into the spotlight was in 1960 with Donald Byrd. In 1963, he recorded his first album for Blue Note, Takin’ Off, which includes what would become one of his biggest hits, “Watermelon Man”. Other albums for Blue Note followed (Maiden Voyage and Speak Like a Child among others), but most importantly, he joined Miles Davis’s quintet, completed by Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and a very young Tony Williams on drums. With Davis, Herbie Hancock would also share the electric visions of the late 1960s, participating in epochal albums like In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Drawing from Davis’s lesson, Hancock would also explore electric and then electronic sounds on his own with the Mwandishi sextet and then with the Headhunters, embracing the cause of funk jazz with the latter and considerably increasing his popularity. His return to acoustic jazz wouldn’t prevent him from venturing into hip hop in 1983 with the album Future Shock, which included another global hit, “Rockit”. And then we must mention at least his collaborations with fellow pianist Chick Corea, with Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, the music for Antonioni’s Blow Up, and the Oscar for the soundtrack of Bertrand Tavernier’s film Round Midnight. In 2005, he released the album Possibilities, which is also the title of his autobiography: the album features, among others, Santana, Paul Simon, Angelique Kidjo, Annie Lennox, and Sting. 2010 saw the release of another of his most acclaimed albums, The Imagine Project, marked by the participation of diverse guests such as Jeff Beck, Seal, Pink, Dave Matthews, The Chieftains, Lionel Loueke, Oumou Sangare, Konono N°1, Anoushka Shankar, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tinariwen, and others.

Since 2011, Herbie Hancock has been a UNESCO ambassador and supports the “International Jazz Day that takes place every April 30: a day, which Bergamo Jazz has long been participating in, in the spirit of sharing the values of inclusion and dialogue between different cultures that Herbie Hancock has always been an authoritative messenger for.”