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The Music of Herbie Hancock

Jazz Unlimited for April 12 will be “The Music of Herbie Hancock.”  Jazz Master Herbie Hancock has been actively been writing, performing and recording his original music for 54 years.  His early success with Blue Note records and with Miles Davis provided a springboard for an exceptionally creative life.  He has written and performed in several different styles of music.  Born in Chicago, he was recognized as a prodigy, playing a movement the 26th Mozart Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony at age 12.  He simultaneously earned engineering and music degrees from Grinnell College.  His early harmonic influence was the Chicago pianist Chris Anderson.  He began teaching at UCLA jazz department in 2013 and in 2014 was named the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.  Hancock delivered six lectures on the Ethics of Jazz during his tenure at Harvard.  Musicians featured playing Hancock's music on this show include Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, the Kenny Barron Trio, Maynard Ferguson, Kurt Elling, Bobby Hutcherson, Roy Hargrove, Michael Brecker, Ahmad Jamal, the Latin SIde of Herbie Hancock group, Pat Meheny, Tony Williams and Eric Dolphy.

The Slide Show has my photographs of some of the artists heard on this show.

The Archive of this show will be available until the morning August 20, 2018.  

Here is a version of "Cantaloupe Ialand" with Herbie Hancock (keyboards) Pat Metheny (g,el-g) Dave Holland (b) Jack DeJohnette (d) filmed around 1990.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.