Music

erbie Hancock could hardly believe the facts. Thanks to his surprise Grammy nomination for album of the year, recognizing River: The Joni Letters, the Los Angeles-based musician becomes only the second jazz instrumentalist vying for the big prize in the Grammy Awards' 50 years.

He follows late saxophonist Stan Getz, who won the top honor for 1964's Getz/Gilberto, his collaboration with Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto.

"It's pretty strange on one hand," Mr. Hancock, 67, says by phone from his LA home. "Here is this music that is constantly evolving and growing, that's improvised, that's an American creation. That bridge is the virtuosity of classical music and the soul and heart and feeling of the blues ... and only twice in 50 years. I'm glad I was one of them."

Mr. Hancock had been summoned to help read the nominations back in early December. He was in the company of much younger, multimillion-album-selling acts such as Taylor Swift, Fergie, Akon and the Foo Fighters. He had already snagged two Grammy nods in the smaller jazz categories. Then record producer Jimmy Jam took the podium to announce the finalists for album of the year. That's when Mr. Hancock heard his name.

"I was blown away," he says. "I looked at Jimmy Jam and he looked at me and smiled. Then Fergie hugged me. I was totally shocked. How could I have ever expected that? It's something that rarely happens."

The Chicago native, however, is no stranger to industry accolades. He has 10 golden gramophones sitting on his mantel. Not just for jazz, either. He's won in the R&B field, for composing and for arranging.

River: The Joni Letters, an instrumental and vocal disc, stands as one of Mr. Hancock's most ambitious, thematic records. It's a paean to singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, yes, but not your typical tribute album.

With help from featured singers such as Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza, Leonard Cohen and Ms. Mitchell, the jazzman's aim was to focus on his subject's words as a guide for the sonic excursions.

"When it comes to lyrics, it doesn't get much better than Joni Mitchell," he says. "Here I have a challenge to my own deficiencies of my own abilities.

"I never pay attention to lyrics. But I wasn't thinking of it as a tribute to Joni. My motivation for picking her had to do with the way I feel about her, which suggests a tribute. I have a deep respect for Joni as a human being, not just as a poet and lyricist. She really stands for what she believes in."

So does Mr. Hancock, who dramatically revamped "Both Sides Now," one of Ms. Mitchell's most beloved tunes thanks to folk singer Judy Collins' 1968 hit cover version. Done as an instrumental, The Joni Letters remake focuses on Mr. Hancock's inspired piano playing and sounds nothing like the original.

That was intentional.

"I wanted the idea of re-harmonizing songs when there's a melodic direction that suggests other harmonic relationships," he explains. "I started doing that, and then before I got too far into it I hadn't thought about whether it worked with the lyrics or not. But look at the title, 'Both Sides Now,' which is already suggesting there's one side and another."

Ah, the thrill of musical adventures. Mr. Hancock began his recording career in the early '60s. Back then he zigzagged from working as the legendary Miles Davis' pianist to releasing solo statements, including 1962's Takin' Off and 1963's My Point of View. The '80s, however, marked the beginning of his eclectic period. Continuing his experimentation with R&B and funk, which started with 1973's seminal Head Hunters, Mr. Hancock released 1982's Future Shock, a merging of synthesizers, funk beats and dance-club rhythms.

That record produced "Rockit," a Grammy-winning R&B and disco staple that introduced him to a wider audience. By 1986 he had returned to straight-ahead jazz with the soundtrack for 'Round Midnight, a film in which he acted and performed. He took home an Oscar for composing that score.

Mr. Hancock never put boundaries on his command of jazz. On 1994's Dis Is Da Drum, he tackled acid jazz, while on 1998's Gershwin's World he paid homage to the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

"My foundation is in jazz, but that foundation is solid enough and broad enough to be interpreted through any number of other genres and cultures," he says.

"The nature of jazz is that it is eclectic. That's why it continues to evolve and grow and expand. It has borrowed from European classical music. Its roots are in African music, but it has expressed Middle Eastern influences and in many cases this is perhaps why many Jewish artists in the '20s and '30s could easily gravitate to jazz, like a George Gershwin or Benny Goodman. It relates to the folk music of Jewish people."

Mr. Hancock is passionate about jazz, especially its expansive reach for future listeners and budding musicians. And even with a Grammy nomination for album of the year, he still feels as though jazz does not get the stateside respect it deserves.

"There's a folk connection period in jazz that others can respond to. Which is why people all over the planet have been able to embrace jazz. Certainly today it has been embraced in a larger way outside the U.S. than in the U.S.

"America today is very much in the short-term focus. Whatever is the now and whatever makes the most noise at the moment is what everybody pays attention to. The rest of the world is not like that. They still embrace what they feel is quality, no matter when it first reached their shores." H

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