Jazz, soul & blues
Herbie Hancock
The American pianist and keyboard player Herbie Hancock holds one of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s records: some thirty appearances, spread over half a century. A veteran of Miles Davis’s quintet before inventing, with the Headhunters, an electric jazz shot through with funk, he has brought almost every one of his line-ups to Montreux, the electric band of 1989, captured at the Casino and released as “Live at Montreux 1989”, the New Standard All Stars in 1997, and a further concert in 2022. Few artists have accompanied the festival for so long. His name also travels with the festival abroad: in December 2025 the Montreux Jazz Festival Japan, in Yokohama, celebrated his 85th birthday (Montreux Jazz Festival International).
Herbie Hancock: some thirty appearances in fifty years
Some thirty appearances on record
There is a category of artist at Montreux beyond that of guest: those who come back so often that they become part of the landscape. Herbie Hancock is the most extreme case, with some thirty appearances counted by the festival.
His trajectory matches that of Montreux’s programming. Trained in acoustic jazz, a member of Miles Davis’s second great quintet in the 1960s, he then swung towards the electric and the funky with the Headhunters, exactly the kind of shift the festival, which refused to be confined to one genre, was built to welcome.
The Headhunters at the Casino
On 19 July 1989, for the festival’s 23rd edition, Herbie Hancock performed at the Casino de Montreux with the Headhunters. The concert was recorded and would later be released as “Live at Montreux 1989”.
That repertoire (the electric jazz laced with funk and rock inaugurated by the album “Head Hunters” in 1973) remains one of his most influential contributions, and still feeds into today’s music.
He kept coming back: in 1997 with the New Standard All Stars, in 1999 again with the Headhunters, then, more than three decades after the 1989 concert, for a new recording released as “Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2022”.
Videos
Herbie Hancock, “Actual Proof”, at the Montreux Jazz Festival (2010).
Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, “Watermelon Man”, at the Montreux Jazz Festival (2010).
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