Now approaching his mid-seventies, Hancock’s career includes countless highlights, both as pianist and composer. He was a key member of Miles Davis’s second great quintet (1964–68); while, at the same time, issuing a series of classic Blue Note albums under his own name. Head Hunters (1973) was, for a period, the bestselling album in jazz history. An avid exponent of technology and electronics in music, Hancock struck gold in 1983 with the Grammy award-winning ‘Rockit’, generally credited as the first popular single to fuse jazz with hip hop. He has composed numerous soundtracks and has continued to champion acoustic jazz via recordings with Chick Corea and his fellow Miles Davis alumni.

Hancock covers this and more in Possibilities, though at times in too cursory a fashion. Unlike his mentor’s thoroughly vituperative memoir, Miles (1990), Hancock rarely has a bad word to say about anyone. Ultimately, it is the personal insights that lift the book beyond standard career retrospective: Hancock’s Chicago childhood; his difficult relationship with his sister Jean, who died in a plane crash in 1985; his addiction to crack cocaine in his fifties, a matter he has never before publicly broached; and his long-term Nichiren Buddhism.

Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams

Hancock’s memoir has been co-written with Lisa Dickey. While stylistically it retains traces of the interviews it was no doubt based upon, Possibilities is nevertheless an engaging read and a fitting tribute to one of the great jazz artists of our time.