Herbie in Ireland & UK

[Cormac Long]

Herbie Hancock is performing at the Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin this coming Sunday 24th. Tickets still available AFAIK. I'll be there.. although I'm not betting on a Rhodes showing up, but I am ticking off one on my list to see before I die.

He's in the Everyman Palace in Cork on Saturday night as part of the Guinness Jazz Festival. That will almost definitely be sold out at this stage.

Other dates of note in the UK..

Nov 12th, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Nov 13th & 14th, Royal Festival Hall, London

[Rob A]

If I am correctly recalling the video I saw that was promo material for the DVD, he was playing a Mark II suitcase in a  studio in France I think for one number. So there's a chance.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZtxzI8V0w at the 2:30 mark. I think a better quality version of that video is up on hulu.com

[Cormac Long]

The gig was great.

The lineout..

Herbie Hancock (piano/keyboards),
Kristina Train (vocals),
Lisa Hannigan (guest vocals one song)
Greg Phillinganes (keyboards/vocals),
Lionel Loueke (guitar),
James Genus (bass)
Trevor Lawrence Jr. (drums)

No Rhodes. Herbie played a Fazioli grand and Korg Oasys to the right of the piano. He did use a Rhodes patch on the Oasys at one point. He also played a Roland AX Guitar synth a few times during the performance, playing solos against the bass, guitar and Greg.

Greg Phillinganes played an Oasys lower tier and a Triton on top. To the right was something I thought might be a clav. But he ended up playing lots of different pads/patches from it. Based on its shape, I'm banking on a Korg M3 as it had a solid raised section. Greg also sang several of the numbers including the cover of Imagine. That guy has a 500W set of pipes.

A couple of the songs featured small levels of vocal recordings from the new album. He mentioned that they can't tour with everyone, so they brought them along on a hard drive.

Encore number was Chameleon and they performed it in a way that when they ended it and got a huge applause, they then immediately restarted it and went into that bad-ass middle section where Herbie originally played that awesome Rhodes solo. Obviously today he plays the solo on piano and Greg added some gorgeous pad transitions underneath it... it really held up to the feel of the original.

All in all, a great night. I strongly recommend it to you lads in the UK to get and see this lineup if you can.