Graduate Speaker
Herbie Hancock
READ HIS COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
(Note: this version was provided prior to Saturday's event.)
Herbie Hancock, jazz pianist, composer and music impresario, addressed more than 650 McCallum Graduate School of Business graduates on May 16.
An icon of modern music, Hancock remains in the forefront of world culture, technology, business and music. With an illustrious career spanning five decades, he continues to expand the public's vision of what music, particularly jazz, is about today. Hancock received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at the ceremony.
Herbie Hancock’s creative path has moved fluidly between almost every development in acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B since 1960. He recorded as a solo artist on the legendary label Blue Note Records at age 20, then joined the Miles Davis Quintet, securing his place in jazz history. After numerous successful jazz recordings and awards, he branched into an accomplished career composing and performing feature film and television music.
Hancock stepped full time into the electronic jazz-funk era with his band The Headhunters in 1973 and recorded the first jazz album to go platinum.
The music he recorded then has been an inspiration for generations of hip hop and dance music artists to this day. In addition to numerous Grammy and MTV Award successes, Hancock won an Oscar in 1986 for scoring the film “'Round Midnight”— in which he also appeared as an actor. His tribute album, "River: The Joni Letters" won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album to win the award.
In 1999, Hancock formed Transparent Music. The multimedia music company is dedicated to the presentation of barrier-breaking music of all types, at all tiers of distribution including recordings, films and TV, concert events and the Internet.
Hancock also maintains a thriving career outside the performing stage and recording studio. Since 1991, he has been the Distinguished Artist in Residence at Jazz Aspen Snowmass in Colorado, a nonprofit organization devoted to the preservation and performance of jazz and American music; he also serves as chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the foremost international organization devoted to the development of jazz performance and education worldwide.
