Herbie Hancock looks back on his legacy ahead of Peace Center concert: Upstate Beat

When Herbie Hancock, the legendary jazz keyboardist who performs at Peace Concert Hall in Greenville on May 12, used to take things apart.

“I was maybe three or four years old when I used to take apart our clock,” Hancock told me in a recent interview. “I’d grab a screwdriver and take it apart, because I wanted to know why the second hand went around faster than the hour hand. How does that work?”

He did it to his Lionel electric train set, too.

“I’ve always been curious,” he said.

It’s easy to see that as a metaphor for Hancock’s career, which stretches back to the early 1960s. He began as an adept post-bop pianist, working with Miles Davis in his groundbreaking “Second Great Quintet” before going solo with albums that accented his acoustic piano playing, a mix of classical elegance and gospel joy.

Then Hancock was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace electric instruments and bring funk and rock influences into his work. In the’70s, Hancock had his biggest commercial success with the funk-fusion masterpiece “Chameleon.” That experimentation continued right into the 1980s with programmed beats and record-scratching on his biggest, most recognizable hit, the instrumental “Rockit.”

“I’ve always been into technology and science,” Hancock said of embracing electronics in his music, a controversial decision at the time. “That was my interest long before I started in music, and it’s how I got to be an early adopter of synthesizers.”

It also speaks to Hancock’s disregard of musical boundaries. His current set is a career retrospective that dips into his acoustic material before bringing out the keyboards and funky drumming.

“We’ve brought back some pieces from the early part of my career and shifted them around a little bit. And we’ve got a new song that I haven’t released. It’s called … well, actually it doesn’t have a title yet.”

Typical Hancock: Always pushing forward.

The 86-year-old musician said that he’s able to include selections from his entire career because of the chemistry he has with his band, which features trumpeter Terence Blanchard, guitarist Lionel Lueke, bassist James Genus and drummer Jaylen Petinaud.

“It’s not just about technique per se,” he said. “It’s how each person interacts with the rest of the band and the interplay, no matter who may be soloing. It’s the response to what the other players are playing and their interpretation of it. It’s a joy for me to play with all of them.”