If you were looking to crown the current greatest living jazz artist, the short list of contenders would include alumni from the ensembles led by trumpeter and band leader Miles Davis (1926-1991) from the 1960s and 1970s.
Which would still only narrow it down to an impressive list of luminaries including Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham.
Yet all are arguably vying for second place behind 86-year-old Herbie Hancock (www.herbiehancock.com), who plays at Glazer Hall in Palm Beach on May 8. Still an active touring draw, the keyboardist will perform with the all-star lineup of trumpeter Terence Blanchard, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist James Genus, and drummer Jaylen Petinaud.
Fellow keyboardist Jarrett (who turns 81 years old on May 8), guitarist McLaughlin (84) and drummer Cobham (82 on May 16) all played with Davis during his initial electrified fusion run in late '60s and early '70s. Bassist Carter (89 on May 4) and Hancock go back further, having been part of the trumpeter's heralded mid-to-late-'60s acoustic quintet with saxophonist Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) and drummer Tony Williams (1945-1997).
"They were all amazing players," Hancock says by phone from his home in Los Angeles, where he's lived for so long that he can only estimate the time frame as being between 45 and 50 years.
"I was so fortunate to work with Miles, Tony, Ron and Wayne. It created a tremendous musical atmosphere for me to be in."
What the age-defiant, Chicago-born Hancock has done -- both during and since his time with Davis -- gives him the edge over the others, including Carter, a longtime distinguished recording artist, educator and sideman with well over 2,000 recording credits. McLaughlin has lived in Monaco for 44 years and is retired from touring; Cobham (a bandmate of McLaughlin's in the post-Davis jazz/fusion juggernaut the Mahavishnu Orchestra) now mostly performs in Europe, having lived in Switzerland since the mid-'80s.
And Jarrett, the most obvious comparison, suffered two strokes in 2018 that caused partial paralysis and his own retirement from touring. Yet even before that, the brilliant and mercurial keyboardist became an exclusively acoustic jazz pianist after having played organ and electric piano with Davis. His famed subsequent solo and trio recordings displayed a purist who was freed from his electronic trappings.
The classically-trained Hancock, on the other hand, has played practically every variation of keyboards, and on every style from traditional jazz and fusion to funk and world music, to become the ultimate crossover artist from the '60s into the 21st Century.
"In my career, it's always been people suggesting that I go in this direction and that direction," says Hancock. "And somehow I was able to get in the right groove at the right time."
Over his 86 years, Hancock has practically lived several different musical lifetimes, including before his tenure with Davis. The 14-time Grammy Award winner's early acoustic piano work with horn players (trumpeter Donald Byrd; saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson, and Phil Woods), plus his 1962 Blue Note debut solo recording Takin' Off, which featured a future jazz standard in "Watermelon Man," preceded his inclusion in the legendary trumpeter's quintet.
That group would redefine the post-bop jazz landscape on albums like ESP, Nefertiti, and Sorcerer, all while Hancock's side solo career included more of his future standards like "Cantaloupe Island," "Maiden Voyage" and "Dolphin Dance" from his albums Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage.
But as the '60s morphed into the '70s, Hancock increasingly included Fender Rhodes electric piano into his recording and touring repertoire. Still, it's safe to say that very few others saw his 1973 album Head Hunters coming.
The chameleonic keyboardist had continued recording with Davis, playing electric piano and organ on his funk-infused 1972 release On the Corner, but took it a step further the following year. Influenced by James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Sly & the Family Stone, Head Hunters displayed Hancock's additional clavinet and synthesizer playing in a new funk-fusion quintet with multi-wind instrumentalist Bennie Maupin, bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason, and percussionist Bill Summers.
The all-instrumental effort became the first jazz album to go platinum. "Watermelon Man" got a slithering new arrangement on it, and the strutting leadoff track "Chameleon" became yet another future Hancock standard. Some acoustic jazz purists weren't impressed, ignoring the fact that three-fifths of the lineup actually played acoustic instruments, yet most critics recognized Hancock's futuristic vision.
"Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital three decades after its initial release," Stephen Erlewine wrote in an AllMusic.com retrospective, "and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop."
Few bands get nicknamed for an album because of its influence, but some of the same personnel has carried on under the name Head Hunters, both with and without Hancock. His following album Thrust, released in 1974, featured a similar lineup other than a percolating new drummer in Mike Clark, and was just as creative despite lacking its predecessor's shock value.
"That was all new territory at that time," Hancock says. "Paul originally played upright acoustic jazz bass, but when he was handed an electric bass, he blended those jazz sensibilities with the funk side of his playing to create a whole new direction. Nobody else sounded like him."
Alternating for the next decade between his new electric sound, traditional acoustic jazz, solo piano, and session work, Hancock still had surprises up his sleeve. Teaming up with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, his 1983 album Future Shock lived up to its title. Its single, "Rockit," blended jazz and hip-hop; synthesizers, Hancock's distorted vocal interjections, and vinyl scratching. And its popularity surged due to an innovative, Godley and Creme-directed animated MTV video that featured robotic artwork by Jim Whiting. The track won Hancock his first Grammy Award, for "Best R&B Instrumental Performance," in 1984.
"Head Hunters had opened a lot of doors by then," Hancock says, "even though I didn't know how it was possible when people were telling me it was a hit record. And rap music was still somewhat underground when 'Rockit' came out, yet that song just kind of blended several different genres and opened more doorways. But I never expected it would win a Grammy, because I never expected any of this!"
In 1986, Hancock won an Academy Award for "Best Original Score" for director Bertrand Tavernier's homage to traditional jazz, Round Midnight, in which Hancock also appeared. Over the past 40 years, the Oscar-winning star of stage, the charts, and both large and small screens has added a baker's dozen more Grammy Awards, most recently for the octogenarian's latest two releases.
His 2007 ode to inimitable pop singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters, won "Best Contemporary Jazz Album" and "Album of the Year" honors, the latter award a rarity for jazz artists. And the star-studded 2010 cover songs album The Imagine Project won "Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals" for John Lennon's "Imagine" and "Best Improvised Jazz Solo" for Hancock's break on Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come."
In 2013, Hancock received a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor alongside actress Shirley MacLaine, opera singer Martina Arroyo, singer/songwriter Billy Joel, and guitarist Carlos Santana. A potent jazz ambassador, Hancock's many titles include chairman at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, creative chair for Jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace.
Fans at Glazer Hall can expect tracks from throughout Hancock's illustrious 60-plus-year career, on everything from acoustic and electric pianos to synthesizers, vocorder and a keytar, the hand-held keyboard he'll play hanging from a strap around his neck at the front of the stage.
"Jaylen, my drummer, is 28 years old and has been with me for a couple years now," Hancock says. "It's great having that kind of young energy in the band. Terence will not only play trumpet, but some keyboards as well. James has played bass with me for a number of years now, and has evolved with so much creativity. And Lionel has written some new arrangements of tracks from the past. So we're having fun with all that, and looking forward to the tour."

If You Go
Herbie Hancock performs at Glazer Hall, 70 Royal Poinciana Way, Suite P70, Palm Beach.
When: 8 p.m. May 8
Tickets: $316.25-$373.75
Info: 561-576-7860, experience.glazerhall.org/153

Music in the 1980s largely involved hearing with one's eyes as much as ears, all due to a waterfall of on screen pop stars like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Culture Club, Milli Vanilli, Lionel Richie, Duran Duran, and Cyndi Lauper.
The decade's MTV and VH1 music videos also featured the sounds of synthesizers, electronic drums, programming, overproduction, and pitch-corrected and auto-tuned vocals along with its makeup, spandex, hair spray and gel, parachute pants, shoulder padding...well, you literally get the picture.
Somehow, the best-selling instrumental rock guitarist of all-time emerged out of the middle of that vocal and audio/visual-dominated pop era.
Joe "Satch" Satriani certainly got the '80s memo. He just never paid attention to it.
"It's strange that Steve [Vai] and I came out of that era, when there was no instrumental rock guitar scene," Satriani says by phone in mid-March from Las Vegas. "And now I'm doing a residency here, playing with [singer/guitarist] Sammy Hagar and [bassist/vocalist] Michael Anthony, keyboardist Greg Phillinganes and drummer Kenny Aronoff, doing lots of Van Halen because that was Sam and Mike's band, 40 years later."
Joining forces with fellow guitar hero and former student Steve Vai in the SatchVaiBand (satchvaiband.com), Satriani performs at the Pompano Amphitheater on April 22 during the co-led group's "Surfing With the Hydra 2026 Tour." Their quintet is rounded out by third guitarist Pete Thorn, bassist Marco Mendoza, and longtime John Mellencamp drummer Aronoff.
The 69-year-old Satriani gave lessons to the 65-year-old Vai in the 1970s before both Long Island, NY natives moved west to seek fame and fortune.
The younger guitarist had risen from his elder's lessons to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, then moved to Los Angeles to join Frank Zappa's band after that iconic bandleader received Vai's exacting transcriptions of his complex music. Satriani likewise relocated west during the late '70s. His other students included Kirk Hammett (Metallica), Larry LaLonde (Primus), and jazz/fusion guitarists Alex Skolnick and Charlie Hunter.
"Joe's the best," Vai said of Satriani as the two prepared to play separate sets at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater in 2024.
"He's a few years older, but he was always very cool and sharing in his guitar lessons. He was strict, and expected you to do what was required, so I always felt like there was someone pulling me up. I can't imagine what my playing, career, and life would've been like without those precious lessons from him in my youth."
For Satriani, youth involved trying to get signed to a major label with San Francisco rock group the Squares before turning away from music with vocals. Early demo recordings and releases, including the 1988 EP Dreaming #11 (Relativity), spawned the instrumental hit "The Crush of Love." A rare non-singing star was born.
"Squares was trying to do what Green Day and Blink-182 eventually did so much better," Satriani says. "So as an experiment when we had a few weeks off in the mid-'80s, I recorded a weird EP of instrumental electric guitar music. No bass, drums or keyboards. It got reviewed in Guitar Player magazine by a journalist who had no idea that I was also the guitarist in the Squares, and set me on a path to embrace that weird side of my playing."
"I'd figured that I'd have to make a living in some other way until radio stations picked up tracks from my album Surfing With the Alien about a year later. I couldn't believe it when I got the call that the album was on the Billboard charts, but I accepted this wonderful reality that had suddenly started to blossom in front of me."
Both Satriani and Vai's full-length debuts had appeared in the mid-'80s. Vai's Flex-Able (Akashic, 1984) was a Zappa-adjacent mix of instrumental and vocal hysteria; Satriani's Not of This Earth (Relativity, 1986) an all-instrumental showcase for his all-purpose technical abilities. Vai also appeared in director Walter Hill's blues-based 1986 film Crossroads in a case of perfect casting -- as Jack Butler, the guitarist who'd sold his soul to the Devil for stardom, only to earn a spot in Hell's house band.
"Nothing could be better than sharing the stage with Steve," says Satriani. "We've known each other since we were young teenagers, and we've always shared this sense of the bizarre. We worked to become good musicians, studying really hard, but were also two rock and roll kids growing up in the suburbs whose parents gave them the freedom to freak out. We realized we could play all wrong and turn things upside down, breaking the rules as composers. And we liked it and developed it from there."
Vai also toured and recorded through the '80s with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake, designed Ibanez's JEM and Universe seven-stringed guitars, and founded the Favored Nations recording label with former Guitar Center owner Ray Scherr before the turn of the century.
The three-time Grammy Award winner's latest solo recording is Inviolate (Favored Nations, 2022), and he's since joined fellow guitarist Adrian Belew, bassist Tony Levin and Tool drummer Danny Carey in the group Beat, which reinterprets '80s King Crimson material.
Satriani likewise toured with a famed singer (Mick Jagger) and hard rock band (Deep Purple), and is part of another supergroup called Chickenfoot with former Van Halen members Hagar and Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. The 15-time Grammy nominee's latest solo release is The Elephants of Mars (earMUSIC, 2022).
Yet the album that's largely defined Satriani's career afterward, Surfing With the Alien (Relativity, 1987), was a molten slab of rock guitar heroics that climbed the charts based on popular cuts like the title track, "Ice 9," "Crushing Day," "Satch Boogie" and "Circles."
His ongoing, guitaristic and similarly-definitive G3 Tour started in 1996, with Vai often appearing before Satriani's closing sets. Third guitarists have included Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Peter Frampton, Steve Lukather, Robert Fripp, and Yngwie Malmsteen.
"G3 is one of those guitar festival things that never really goes away," Satriani says. "We did a reunion of the original G3 lineup with myself, Steve and Eric [Johnson] a couple years ago, and the shows sold out and we wanted to extend it. But Eric told us he'd already booked the next year and a half on his tour schedule. That was the reason Steve and I toured together with our separate bands in 2024."
The "Surfing" portion of the "Surfing With the Hydra Tour" is obvious, but the "Hydra" portion refers to Vai's triple-neck guitar/bass hybrid. Designed by Vai for Ibanez, the Hydra features a seven-stringed guitar, a 12-stringed guitar, and a four-stringed bass; with fretted and fretless options throughout. The all-purpose instrument is featured on both the cover and recorded portions of Inviolate.
"We mix things up live, playing songs from our forthcoming album as well as from our latest releases and classic stuff," Satriani says. "We toured Europe for a couple months last summer, and it was so successful and so much fun, so we won't change too much."
Ironically, the two guitarists who reached stardom for their sounds in the visual era, and are set to release a SatchVaiBand album, are using music videos to promote the new project. Both "Dancing" and "The Sea of Emotion" insert ample comic elements, including the duo's self-deprecating humor, amid the expected guitar histrionics.
"We were taking finished tracks to the earMUSIC label, and they would tell us they needed a video for them," says Satriani. "And we're like, 'Really? Do people actually still do that?' But they've been a lot of fun. The 'Dancing' video involved a great day of watching all these different people dance in such incredible and different ways. My only stipulation beforehand was that I wasn't going to dance. And they said, 'No, you and Steve don't have to dance.' Thankfully."

If You Go
The SatchVaiBand, with opening act Animals As Leaders, performs at the Pompano Amphitheater, 1806 N.E. 6th St., Pompano Beach.
When: 7 p.m. April 22
Tickets: $47.86-$91.50
Info: 561-223-7231, www.pompanobeacharts.org/amp