Herbie Hancock — River: The Joni Letters

Norah Jones opens the album in her comfort zone, conversational and warm over a bossa-inflected groove. The arrangement gives her space to phrase behind the beat and Hancock comps lightly, more accompanist than co-creator. Shorter's solo in the second half adds melodic development Jones does not attempt, but the track never pushes past Mitchell's original structure. A pleasant start that sets the tone for an album more interested in respect than reinterpretation.

Tina Turner brings a lived-in rasp to Mitchell's character study and the band leans into a slow funk that could have gone further. Prince's uncredited guitar stays in the background when the track needed his edge up front. Colaiuta's drumming has the most personality here, pushing against the arrangement's politeness, but the vocal and the band never fully connect. A missed opportunity for the friction the album rarely permits.

The first instrumental and the album's clearest argument for itself. Shorter takes Mitchell's melody on soprano and stretches it across seven minutes of patient, searching improvisation, each phrase unfolding from the last without hurry. Hancock's voicings are richer here than on the vocal tracks, moving through the harmony rather than simply supporting it. Holland and Colaiuta respond with the kind of interactive playing the album too often mutes under the singers. This is the quintet at full strength, proving they could have carried the whole project if Hancock had trusted them to. The strongest track and the one that sounds least like a tribute.

Corinne Bailey Rae sings with delicate phrasing over quiet piano and bass, and the restraint becomes a problem. Mitchell's lyric already aches; the arrangement adds nothing but space, and space without tension is just waiting. Shorter sits this one out and no instrumental voice fills the gap. Pretty, forgettable and too slight to justify its place in the sequence.

The second instrumental and the longest track, giving the quintet room to develop Mitchell's theme without a vocalist to frame. Shorter moves between soprano and tenor, Loueke's guitar adds harmonic color, and the rhythm section finally asserts itself with the kind of swing the vocal tracks suppress. The eight minutes feel earned but also reveal the limitations of the approach: the band is exploring Mitchell's changes more than using them as a springboard, which keeps the track grounded when it could lift off. Solid playing in service of a concept that plays it safe.

Joni Mitchell herself appears, her voice older and less supple but still phrasing with the authority of someone who wrote the words. The band plays with audible reverence, Hancock comping as if accompanying a master class, and the result is moving as a historical document but inert as a jazz performance. Mitchell's presence shifts the session from interpretation to preservation, which is exactly what the album does not need more of. An honorable inclusion that underscores the project's deference.

Another instrumental, this time leaning into the title's introspection with Shorter on tenor and Hancock voicing chords that let silence do the work. The track has no clear peak and no need for one; it settles into a mood and stays there. Effective as an interlude but slight compared to the two longer instrumentals, and it arrives at a point in the sequence where the album has already established that instrumental stretches will play it safe. Brief and tasteful, which by now is a pattern.

Luciana Souza's higher, airier voice offers a contrast to the earthier vocalists earlier in the album, and the arrangement matches her register with a lighter touch from the rhythm section. Shorter's solo in the second half has more presence than on most of the vocal features, stepping into the foreground rather than staying politely behind. The track works on its own terms but does not shift the album's momentum, another well-executed moment in a sequence of well-executed moments. The lack of dynamic variation across the vocal tracks becomes the issue, not the quality of any individual performance.

Wayne Shorter's 1968 composition, the only non-Mitchell tune on the album, finds the quintet returning to familiar territory with the composer present. Hancock and Shorter played this piece with the Miles Davis Quintet and the arrangement here honors that history without repeating it: Loueke's guitar takes the role the trumpet once held, and Colaiuta's drumming is more active than Tony Williams ever allowed himself on the original. The track breathes in ways the Mitchell covers do not, the band trusting each other to push without a vocalist to protect. It sits second to last and feels like a reminder of what the musicians are capable of when they stop being so careful. Strong, though not quite essential next to the catalog of readings this tune has received.

Leonard Cohen speaks more than sings over Loueke's guitar and Colaiuta's restless rhythms, the most adventurous arrangement on the record and the one that least resembles a standard jazz vocal feature. Cohen's voice is a rumble, his phrasing conversational and free of the melody, and the band responds with textures rather than swing. The track risks more than anything else here and it still feels like a curio, interesting for the presence of two icons but not cohesive as a performance. A bold closer that arrives too late to shift the album's overall caution, though it suggests what a riskier version of this project might have sounded like.