Day Makes a Difference for Hancock

COSTA MESA — Just a night after a disappointingly brief and aimless performance at the Hollywood Bowl, pianist Herbie Hancock’s quartet pulled it together Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in a triumphant, nearly two-hour program. Led by Hancock, who seemed so intent on brevity at the Bowl that he was nearly invisible, the group showed decidedly more intensity at OCPAC, coming together with purpose even while individual members soloed with determination.

The difference may have been the clock. Squeezed onto the end of a three-way concert that included Hancock matching wits in a four-handed keyboard session with fellow pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Hancock’s group hardly had enough time to make its presence felt during Wednesday’s Bowl appearance.

But it was apparent from the first tune Thursday that the group meant business. Though the opener was the same, Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street,” Hancock took more time to develop his solo, liberally sprinkling it with the kind of familiar Herbie-isms that have marked his play since his “Takin’ Off” was released in 1962.

Throughout the evening, Hancock took the time to develop each improvisation in narrative style, providing not only climax but also denouement. Filled with agitated chordal clusters, twisting ascending lines and hard exclamation, Hancock’s play was more firmly stamped with his identity than it was the previous night.

The same was true of saxophonist Craig Handy, whose brief Bowl solos came with little rhyme or reason. Inside Segerstrom Hall (which seemed almost intimate by comparison), Handy showed a smart sense of narrative, playing coolly on soprano, more aggressively on tenor. His efforts, especially near the end of the evening, brought the biggest audience response.

Bassist Dave Holland, who had given Wednesday’s show its only meaningful moments during his solo bass introduction to his own “Dreams of the Elders,” topped that effort with an amazingly lyrical, perfectly pitched introduction to the same piece.

Holland’s ensemble play, whether on acoustic upright or bass guitar, supported, pushed and echoed his bandmates, sometimes all at once.

*

While the Bowl’s pesky amplification system often made it seem as if drummer Gene Jackson was playing with one hand, better miking here brought out his crisp, diligent sound. Jackson showed especially talented feet, working the bass pedal with sharp precision while dancing on his hi-hat cymbal pedal.

The group mainly stuck to the reinterpretations of pop tunes heard on Hancock’s latest release, “The New Standard.” “Mercy Street” opened on a bass riff that recalled Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints”; “Norwegian Wood” moved at a traditional ballad pace, and a blues-based interpretation of Prince’s “Thieves in the Temple” recalled Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.”

A request for “One Finger Snap,” a ‘60s Hancock tune, was dismissed after Hancock explained that things had changed since the song debuted. Instead, the group launched into an intense version of Stevie Wonder’s “You’ve Got It Bad, Girl.”

*

But the changing world didn’t stop Hancock from closing with the old standard “Just One of Those Things,” which he ended with a stirringly dense and masterful display that seemed to support the old maxim: Everything old can be new again.