Herbie Hancock

Also known as Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock, Herbert Jeffrey Hancock, Herbert Hancock

American jazz pianist and composer (born 1940)

OverviewAI-generated

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock is an American singer-songwriter, bandleader, conductor, and jazz musician born in Chicago in 1940. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. His musical career spans genres including jazz, bebop, jazz fusion, and post-bop, with additional tags noting funk. He plays the piano, keytar, electric piano, and flute, and has recorded for Blue Note, Columbia Records, Verve Records, and Mercury Records.

Hancock has received the MTV Video Music Award for Best Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects, as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Score. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and several MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Male Video and Video of the Year. He studied at Grinnell College and the Manhattan School of Music under Vittorio Giannini. A practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, he is recognized in the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Kennedy Center Honors collections.

Synthesized by Vinony from 38 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Europeana Sparql, Firecrawl, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Film & TV

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had…

Known for

Tuner — Herbie Hancock2026
Herbie — Self (Archives)2025
Don Lewis and The Live Electronic Orchestra — Self2024
Henry Mancini: 100 at the Hollywood Bowl — Self2024
Joni Mitchell - The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize For Popular Song — Self2023
They All Came Out to Montreux — Self2023
Jacob Collier: In the Room Where It Happens2022
Herbie Hancock - Live at SummerStage 2022 — Self2022
Hargrove — Self2022
Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes — Self2022

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Country: United States
Active from: 1940

Discography

Member of

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 1,564,962
Total plays: 23,684,249

Official website

Home - Herbie HancockHerbie Hancock

herbiehancock.com →

Link to the official site · 2,477 chars · not written by Vinony

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Gender: male
Citizenship: United States
Place of birth: Chicago
Occupation: film score composer
Position held: UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
Employer: University of California, Los Angeles
Languages spoken: English language
Native language: English language
Religion: Nichiren Buddhism
Award: Polar Music Prize
Student of: Vittorio Giannini
Genre: classical music
Instrument: musical keyboard
Record label: PolyGram
Official website: www.herbiehancock.com
Image: Herbie Hancock 2006.jpg

Show 12 more facts

Commons category: Herbie Hancock
date of birth: 1940-04-12
Commons gallery: Herbie Hancock
topic's main category: Category:Herbie Hancock
member of: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
ethnic group: African Americans
social media followers: 191070
writing language: English language
related category: Category:Films scored by Herbie Hancock
topic has template: Template:Herbie Hancock
P10632: Herbie Hancock
start of work period: 1961-00-00

Sources (8)

via Wikidata · CC0

Works in European collections

1 object attributed to Herbie Hancock, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

"Galapagosleguan, on hold at cacti. : See series with photon. 3779-3822. "

~32 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer. He started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. Hancock soon joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, he experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles using a wide array of synthesizers and electronics. It was during this time that he released one of his best-known and most influential albums, Head Hunters.

Hancock's best-known compositions include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man", "Maiden Voyage", and "Chameleon", all of which are jazz standards. During the 1980s, he had a hit single with the electronic instrumental "Rockit", a collaboration with bassist/producer Bill Laswell. Hancock has won an Academy Award and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for his 2007 album River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to his friend Joni Mitchell. In 2024, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph ranked Hancock as the greatest keyboard player of all time. In 2025, he received the Polar Music Prize.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Herbie Hancock” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.