Tickets go on sale tomorrow for two exclusive Herbie Hancock Royal Festival Hall concerts scheduled for 13 and 14 November, part of this year’s London Jazz Festival held in association with BBC Radio 3.

The pianist and composer who turned 70 in April was last at the festival two years ago when his band featuring trumpeter Terence Blanchard played separate shows at the RFH and the Barbican. Hancock interviewed in Jazzwise published today talks about his new album The Imagine Project which is the third in a trilogy of vocals-based albums and follows the Grammy-winning album, River: The Joni Letters, and the earlier Warners album, Possibilities.

“This record is about peace and global collaboration,” says Hancock in the interview. “It’s about collaboration, inspiration for the average person, for the people themselves, rather than complaining about globalisation, and it’s a call to arms for the people to be proactive, for building, creating a future world that we want to live in, the kind of globalisation that we want.”

In June Hancock, one of the most influential and innovative pianists in the history of jazz, celebrated his seventieth birthday with a special concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. This September following European summer festival dates including the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway tonight, he will appear at a special Hollywood Bowl concert closer to home in Los Angeles.

Hancock has been touring recently with a band that includes guitarist Lionel Loueke and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes and the relatively little known vocalist Kristina Train. Hancock says, in the interview, Train is “in her own way as much a jazz singer as Norah Jones is, kind of hybrid with her own material and her own record.”

On the new album a who’s who of famous names including Wayne Shorter, Anoushka Shankar, Vinnie Coliauta, Jeff Beck, Pink, Lisa Hannigan, James Morrison, John Legend, India.Arie, Juanes and Céu appear, with a range of songs including ‘Don’t Give Up’, Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Gonna Come’ and the album standout ‘The Song Goes On’.

– Stephen Graham

Jazzwise is a media sponsor of the London Jazz Festival. For tickets go to www. southbankcentre.co.uk