Herbie Hancock’s current project can be understood as both a progression and a reclamation. On Thursday night at the Prospect Park Bandshell, in a marquee concert at the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, he tucked some eagerly anticipated new music into a set list otherwise devoted to reframed hits. From behind his grand piano and a bank of synthesizers — or sometimes standing out front, with a keytar — he held magnanimous court, presiding over an evening that reaffirmed his legacy in the realm of vanguardist pop, jazz-funk and R&B.
Mr. Hancock is 76, and has long been something like the Polaris of jazz modernism at the piano: an aspirational model, a navigational point, a fixture in the firmament. His pop career, officially starting with the 1973 album “Head Hunters,” used to be widely regarded as a separate thing.
That’s changing, if it hasn’t already, because of the implicit permissions that so many artists are now taking from Mr. Hancock’s example. Choosing sides isn’t such a pressing obligation anymore. Survey the landscape, and you’ll find a robust bloc of youngish jazz musicians conversant in precisely the brand of fusion that Mr. Hancock helped establish, and secure in the knowledge that it isn’t in any way disqualifying.
A handful of musicians fitting that description are members of Mr. Hancock’s hyper-articulate band: the saxophonist and keyboardist Terrace Martin; the guitarist and vocalist Lionel Loueke; the bassist James Genus; the drummer Trevor Lawrence Jr. Still others appeared in opening sets by the Robert Glasper Experiment and Jamie Lidell and the Royal Pharaohs, two groups pursuing an ultramodern strain of soul. It was hardly a surprise that the entire program felt of a piece, or that Mr. Hancock seemed to be the force holding it together.
He has been working on a new album with collaborators like the intrepid electronic producer Flying Lotus and Mr. Martin, who’s also a producer and wingman for the rapper Kendrick Lamar. Precisely what the album will sound like is a matter of conjecture, but there were some early intimations in “Overture,” the roughly 15-minute taste of new material in the show.
It began in near-abstraction, with futuristic whooshes and otherworldly synth-glow, before a beat materialized. Then Mr. Martin pivoted from keyboards to saxophone, delivering a solo in bright, imploring bursts against a thrashing loop of funk rhythm.
The tune gradually segued into another section at a more relaxed tempo. Mr. Hancock started into a piano solo with his usual quicksilver poise, but just as he seemed ready to settle in, he swerved instead into a series of syncopated hits designed to showcase the drums. It was a clever head fake: As Mr. Lawrence smartly jackhammered at his cymbals, snare and toms, Mr. Hancock intensified his own output, answering a call. The tune ended like that, ratcheting up before dropping off, and it was just enough to meet ravenous expectations in the crowd.
Unexpectedly, the greatest-hits component of the set felt similarly charged, as if perking up with an infusion of new blood. Mr. Hancock has overworked some of these tunes to the point of exhaustion in other shows, stamping them with a showman’s rote proficiency.
But after the focused sprawl of “Overture,” he and the band seemed to accept an unspoken challenge. So “Watermelon Man” became something more than a slinky strut, segueing into a clavinet funk shuffle like the one on Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.” he fired off a keytar solo that highlighted the unusual skill set for that instrument: a different touch and sense of phrase than at the piano; a blinkered willingness to court ridicule in the service of play.
But where the band really found peak enlightenment was on “Come Running to Me,” a track from the 1978 crossover album “Sunlight.” Featuring a melody sung by Mr. Hancock through a vocoder, it’s a not-quite-slow jam that presages the sound of a lot of recent pop music, including the work of Daft Punk. The band, with Mr. Loueke and Mr. Martin pitching in on background vocals, made it sound almost like a new proposition. It’s hard to imagine Mr. Hancock could ever have performed the song as persuasively in its original era.
The Robert Glasper Experiment has something to do with the shift in perception around this sound: Vocoders are a regular feature of its shows, usually thanks to the saxophonist Casey Benjamin. The band’s set was abbreviated here by weather-related production delays, but there was time enough to play a feel-good version of “Reminisce,” by the elastically suave R&B singer Bilal. He sang it well and was then joined by the rapper Common, who reeled off a buoyant freestyle for the occasion (“I remember Herbie when he was doing ‘Rockit’”).
Mr. Hancock’s album, which seems likely to land next year, is starting to feel less like a blank. Flying Lotus, Mr. Martin and their peers, like the bassist and singer Thundercat and the tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington, all claim Mr. Hancock as a hero, not only because of what he’s done but also because of what he’s still doing. The boundless, irrepressible quality of his performance was a potent reminder of that, but if the current musical climate is any indicator, no reminders are really needed.
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