On June 14, the veteran jazz superstar headlined the Rhythm on the Vine Music & Wine Festival at Temecula's South Coast Winery Resort & Spa in Southern California. Seating capacity for the outdoor concert, a benefit for Shriners Hospitals for Children in Los Angeles, was 1,100.

On June 15, the 12-time Grammy Award-winner headlined the second day of the 30th annual Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. Seating capacity for the festival was 17,500.

Hancock's band was the same at both venues: bass great Dave Holland, saxophonist Chris Potter, teen singing sensation Sonya Kitchell, West African guitarist Lionel Loueke, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and singer Amy Keys. The repertoire at both concerts was similar, despite the difference in settings.

"I actually didn't think about the difference in sizes until you mentioned it," Hancock said. "When I walk out on a stage, I try to be in the moment. It is sometimes more difficult to project intimacy in a larger venue. But if you can really get the attention of a crowd, you can transform a large place into an intimate atmosphere and get into the heads and hearts of the people who are there."

For Hancock, who won his first Grammy in 1983, the number of heads and hearts has grown exponentially since early February.

It was then - in front of a surprised audience at the Staples Center in Los Angeles - that an even more surprised Hancock beat out the heavily favored Kanye West and Amy Winehouse to earn the coveted Album of the Year Grammy Award for his Joni Mitchell tribute, "River: The Joni Letters."

It was the first time a jazz artist had won Album of the Year honors since American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian bossa-nova star Joao Gilberto won in 1964 for their "Getz/Gilberto" collaboration.

"How surprised was I? It's immeasurable ... I didn't even hear my name when it was called," Hancock said backstage at the Grammys, shortly after his upset victory. "Kanye wished me good luck, but said he hoped he'd win."

In the week following his unexpected Grammy victory for "River," which also took home a jazz award, Hancock watched the 10-song disc soar from No. 159 to No. 5 on the national Billboard charts. That dizzying spike saw sales rise in one week from 53,000 to 114,390.

Four months later, Hancock sounds characteristically circumspect as he discusses the album. It features two sterling instrumental compositions, Duke Ellington's "Solitude" and Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," and eight Mitchell classics, which are sung by such disparate artists as Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen and - on "Tea Leaf Prophecy" - Mitchell herself.

"In most cases, people are seeing it as a big win for jazz, which it is," said the 68-year-old music maverick.

"People will think that I'm happy for me. But it wasn't just for me. I was thinking of a much larger picture. I already had 10 Grammys; I've been around a while. So, just the idea of winning an award for myself doesn't mean much, not at this age. There are things more important than winning awards. ...

"I know nobody gets into jazz for fame or money. You get into it because you really love the music and there's something you want to share with other people, and because you feel the music is important and you strive for excellence."

LIFELONG QUEST

That quest has been a nearly lifelong one for the classically trained Hancock, who was only 11 when he performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In 1963, he began a five-year tenure in trumpeter Miles Davis' fabled quintet. His heady electric keyboard work on Davis' "Bitches Brew" helped that epic jazz-rock fusion album win a Grammy in 1970.

But it was on acoustic piano that Hancock shined brightest during the 1960s, when he made such stunning solo albums as "Maiden Voyage" and "Speak Like a Child."

By the turn of the decade, he was eager to pursue a broader sonic and stylistic palette that saw him expanding from post-bop to cutting-edge and funk-tinged jazz. In the early 1970s, his pioneering band, Mwandishi, found him boldly experimenting with extended compositional techniques and African music, while also drawing on his social consciousness.

"I was interested in exploring territory I hadn't explored before," he said. "I chose the name Mwandishi for the band and for myself, and the other guys in the band also had Swahili names. It was an attempt to show our solidarity with the civil rights movement, in acknowledgment of our African roots. We also explored Sufi-ism and other religions; I've been a practicing Buddhist for almost 36 years now."

Hancock went on to score a major techno hit with 1983's "Rockit," followed by a borders-leaping collaboration with Foday Musa Suso, an adventuresome master of traditional West African music who shared the keyboardist's broad aesthetic vision.

Now, as then, Hancock is more eager to grow and move forward than he is to dwell on his accomplishments.

"It's always about improving," he said. "And it's not always that way in pop music. There's so much attention paid to just being famous in a lot of cases, getting your name in print, getting seen.

"All of that is fine; I love getting my name in print and getting seen. But that's not an end, it's a means, and for a lot of artists now, it's an end (and) the money and the bling they can get from it. But when it's all said and done, at least in jazz, it's about striving for excellence."

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