Herbie Hancock - V.S.O.P. (1977) [Japanese SACD Reissue 2007] PS3 ISO + DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

V.S.O.P. is a 1977 double live album by pianist and keyboard player Herbie Hancock, featuring acoustic jazz performances by the V.S.O.P. Quintet (Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams), and jazz fusion and jazz-funk performances by the Mwandishi band (with Eddie Henderson) and The Headhunters (featuring Bennie Maupin and Paul Jackson).

V.S.O.P. is a landmark album in the history of jazz, though not at all in the way it was intended. George Wein organized a Herbie Hancock retrospective concert at the 1977 Newport Jazz Festival in New York where three bands from Hancock's past and present – the 1965-1968 Miles Davis Quintet with Freddie Hubbard deputizing for the indisposed Miles, the 1969-1973 sextet, and Hancock's then-current jazz-funk outfit – would share the stage. As things turned out, it was the Miles band reunion that grabbed most of the attention, leading to several tours which in turn inspired a whole generation of young musicians (led by Wynton Marsalis) to turn their backs upon electronics and make bop-grounded acoustic jazz the lingua franca of jazz for the rest of the 20th century. This is not the outcome the forward-looking Hancock would have preferred, but you cannot deny that he, Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams sound marvelously in sync with each other, playing in a free-flowing, post-bop style none of them had touched in years. (Hancock is actually playing a Yamaha electric grand piano, not an acoustic grand – there's a substantial sonic difference, yet one that went unremarked upon by otherwise-watchful purists at the time). The concert also turned out to be a farewell to the great Hancock Sextet (which has yet to reunite on records); this group actually made the most absorbing, adventurous music of that evening, with trumpeter Eddie Henderson laying a more credible claim to Miles' pithy idiom than Hubbard had earlier. The sextet plays only two numbers: "Toys" and "You'll Know When You Get There." It's a pity there isn't more. The two-LP set concludes with a somewhat disappointing jazz-funk set from a post-Headhunters edition band with Bennie Maupin and Paul Jackson as holdovers. They don't quite raise the temperature, or the complexity level as high as earlier Hancock jazz-funk outfits. The contrast between Hancock's present on this given day and his illustrious past was no doubt used as ammunition by the back-to-bop crowd to proclaim that "fusion" has got to go, which was unfair. The reverberations from this concert continue to this day.

Tracklist

DISC ONE:
01. Piano Introduction
02. Maiden Voyage
03. Nefertiti
04. Introduction Of Players/Eye Of The Hurricane

DISC TWO:
01. Toys
02. Introductions
03. You'll Know When You Get There
04. Hang Up Your Hang Ups
05. Spider


Tracks 1-4 performed by V.S.O.P., Tracks 5-7 performed by Mwandishi, Tracks 8-9 performed by the Headhunters.
Recorded Live on June 29, 1976 at Newport Jazz Festival, New York City Center, New York.
DSD Mastering Engineer: Mark Wilder at Sony/BMG Music Studios, New York.
Sony Music Japan # SICP-10071~72


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Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 1,67 + 1,83 GB
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