A pianist at age 7, Herbie Hancock was a child prodigy and soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by 11. At 18 he was majoring in electrical engineering and music at Grinnell College, and by 20 he had dropped out. Herbie (Hancock just sounds superfluous) has cut a similarly slashing, dashing path through jazz, one that leaves people scratching their heads as often as tapping their feet. Indeed, while acoustic jazz remains the style he is most well known for, Herbie's forays into electronica, funk, gospel, hip-hop, soul, R&B and even classical have been both highly valued and highly unpredictable. In 1983, Herbie's Grammy-winning (in the R&B category) album Future Shock put scratching and DJ'ing on the musical map and, to jazz fans, represented a major departure from his jazz upbringing or even the funk-influenced Head Hunter days of the 1970s. However, the role he played in the early '80s in linking jazz music and hip-hop culture, or perhaps, in other words, past and future respectively, is still fits today. Just a couple of years ago, Herbie released the Future 2 Future (2002) album, a progressive mix of jazz, electronica and funk-what JazzWeek called "an unholy alliance"-fused into 11 tracks, and he comes to us now in the middle of a national tour celebrating the lives of jazz pioneers Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Directions In Music is the stage name for the acoustic ensemble consisting of Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove. Trumpet prodigy Roy Hargrove is a bandleader in his own right, as is tenor saxophonist and 11-time Grammy winner Michael Brecker (Herbie has 8 Grammys, by the way). All three men owe a Grammy to the eponymous, Directions In Music, a live release from their original tour in 2001, a year that would have marked the 75th birthdays of Davis and 'Trane. In 2005, Directions In Music is again trying to recognize the well-known contributions of Davis and Coltrane while simultaneously living up to their creative, futuristic spirit. Herbie recently took some time from his musical experiments to talk with us about Directions In Music, which way his own direction and spirit lie, and why the world could still learn a thing or two from jazz.

The acoustic group you are touring with right now, Directions In Music, includes some heavy-hitters.

I guess they call it a "supergroup" because most of the guys in the band are bandleaders.

It's the Dream Team.

Oh, well thanks. The key focus, most people would say, would be myself, Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove.

Directions In Music was established to commemorate Miles Davis' and John Coltrane's 75th birthdays in 2001. What has the group become since then?

When we first put it together, we felt like people would have expected us to play the classic arrangements those guys did. And that would have been the easy thing to do, in a sense, but we felt that in order to really represent what the spirit of Miles and 'Trane was really about was (to put our own sound into it) because they always put their own spin, their own direction, their own vision, their own sound into the pieces they did.

So Directions In Music does a little of that, too?

Not just too, but that would be the real spirit behind what we do. That way we would really be celebrating what they would be about. It surprised a lot of people because they were expecting kinda the arrangements they had heard for many years from 'Trane and Miles and they didn't get that. It worked very well, and there have been requests for some more tours, but we can't go back to the same places and play the same pieces, so we're working on another kind of direction but still with the spirit of what we did in the past, and that is to carve out a direction for whatever pieces we choose to play.

Your background is so diverse-acoustic jazz, electronic, pop, hip hop, the list goes on-which Herbie Hancock will we see at Boston Symphony Hall?

(Laughing) The same one because there is only one.

The music comes from the same place, I imagine.

Yes, exactly, there's a human being behind there. My feeling is every human being is capable of being involved with more than one single thing as part of being a human being. I chose to explore other territories. For the most part, others are not encouraged to do that, you know. Once (people) view you in a certain kind of pigeonhole, they expect you to stay there.

Is acoustic jazz your focus right now?

It is for a few years. It's been the primary focus since the mid '90s after I did a record called "This Is The Drum." We are talking about maybe ah, one... two... three... four, I don't know, five or six records.

Has your interest in electronica influenced your acoustic sound?

Ah no, except the recording techniques. There have been some improvements in areas of acoustic recording, but they don't affect the sound that I make.

You don't try to reproduce reverb or delay during an acoustic set?

Oh, I know what you mean. (laughing) That I might try to do because I am crazy enough to try stuff like that! (laughing hard) There's this thing that people associate with my jazz piano playing, when I play this kinda trill thing with octaves, (singing) ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling. It's my attempt to hold a note. (laughing) The piano knows you can't sustain a note on the piano, I mean it dies out while a sax or trumpet can sustain the same line level. So it's kinda my attempt to do that. And I've been known to bend a note or give the illusion of it.

If I could back up, you were once quoted as saying, "Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that go far beyond just making music for the sake of music." What did you mean by that?

Well, we could look at music as entertainment, for example. That can be one of its functions if we choose it to be. But music is not just made by musicians, it's made by human beings. Human beings that live in times, they are affected by those times and its influences. (Human beings) have a voice, and have a voice to have an opinion or something they want to share. Besides just the pure entertainment, their message is something that can move people, touch people, encourage people. It's the humanity behind those notes that's the vision behind the artist sitting on a stage playing in front of the audience.

Do you take into consideration the experiences of black people in this country when you make music?

First of all, I chose jazz. Jazz is a music that grew directly out of the black experience in the first place, the black experience in America. Yes, there are other influences, but the primary roots really come from Africa. Jazz is obviously music that came out of the black experience, and I would say that people realize it. Most artists, and certainly the ones from Europe or anywhere outside of America, are much more aware of it than American artists 'cuz it doesn't get talked about very much (in the United States). The artists of today don't have to go through those experiences that people like Charlie Parker had to go through and the kinds of racial things they had to experience, the things that Miles had to experience.

Has racial discrimination declined over the last 40 years?

It has changed.

But not improved.

Yes, it has improved. It has improved. It definitely has improved. In other words, the dues that they paid were not in vain. It doesn't mean that the battle is over. It's not. But my feeling about how to be a part of the battle for justice, social justice, really grows out of my experience of practicing Buddhism for 32 years. I see the music that grew out of the black experience being a great lesson for humanity. And this explains why people from all walks of life, you know, all countries on the planet, have been attracted to jazz. This is because jazz grew out of slavery. Jazz is the most positive response to a most terrible human experience that anyone could experience. Jazz is so positive and so creative and such a needed response to that kind of persecution and discrimination. What it shows is what the human being is capable of doing, turning this great poison into a great medicine.

How does Buddhism fit

into that?

Buddhism really helps me to support a viewpoint I believe I held before I started practicing Buddhism. Buddhism helps me to see in many cases a broader view of an experience. I feel like in a lot of cases I can see more of the forest and not just the trees. It's an amazing practice and it helps to really support a person's sense of humanity and a sense of the beauty that's in all people.

Just as you were saying how the black experience is communicated through jazz, do you communicate a Buddhist message through your music?

I certainly hope so, I certainly hope so. Buddhism has affected the core of my life. It's almost like it's a force that helps to kind of turn on a light inside of me. It's very powerful. It's at the deepest core of your life, it's the real person that's there. When you find that really important jewel that you know exists in everybody's life, you try to help other people find that jewel, you know.

And everyone's got a story, everybody's got a jewel of some sort, I imagine.

Absolutely. And it's a very democratic kind of viewpoint.

Democratic, that's interesting.

(Pauses) Maybe that's too small a word to use. Humanistic is better.

Democracy is messy sometimes.

Yeah, it is. Especially today. It gets really messy because it's misinterpreted. I mean, I see in this country us trying to ram democracy down other human beings' throats. That in itself is not democratic. If you are going to practice democracy, practice it. So, you're right. I don't want to use that word. Humanistic is a better word.

I'd like to back up again. The tune "Rockit" with Grandmaster DST on the turntables in 1983 caught the nation by surprise and is still referred to today as a milestone in the development of hip hop. When and why did you start working with turntablists?

(Rockit) started with my manager at the time. This guy was very talented. One thing he liked to do was find out the real shakers and movers that are underground, emerging or bubbling under the surface that he predicts will be influencing the directions of tomorrow. So he turned me on to Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn. But I had heard a record, "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren, and that was the first record I heard with scratching on it. And I liked that sound. I had just heard it a few days before I got a chance to meet Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn. They were living in New York, and they brought some stuff they had prepared on tape to my studio in L.A., and the first thing they played for me had scratching on it! DST was the one on the record when Bill Laswell brought those tapes.

Rap grew out of what I call "playing the dozens." That in itself wasn't rap, but it was some of the same subject material of rap and the spirit of guys challenging themselves, you know, dissing each other? (Laughs) That grew out of what I think is "playing the dozens."

"Play the dozens?"

"Playing the dozens." You be talking about each other's mother, you know, "You mama doesn't do this or that." Everybody be about your mother, your father, your sister, always some negative stuff, but it was done in fun.

It's a competition.

Yeah, it was a competition type of thing. And the other kids be listening, if you get the best of another cat they go, "Oooooohhhhhhh." But I wasn't too good at it, so I stayed out of that stuff. Fortunately I found music and playing the piano. And for some reason people like to leave the musicians alone for the most part, 'cuz we don't mess with anybody, we're kinda harmless.

What's in your CD player right now?

Most of the time nothing is in my CD player. The last thing I played was a Billy Holiday thing I got off the I-Tunes music store for the lady who is wiring my studio. She said she couldn't find any Billy Holiday in the stores, so I got some off the I-Tunes Apple site for her. What led to that, I was talking about Joni Mitchell, so I played something from Joni Mitchell's most recent album, and it's the most beautiful stuff. She sounds amazing. She sounds like a real jazz singer from her heart, and you can feel it. It's a talent that people don't know that's inside Joni. A lot of people never heard these records because the artist never gets the exposure they deserve.

There's a lot of music out there, and a lot of it is stuffed into someone's closet.

What bothers me is that radio is so oppressive, you know, there's so much stuff that hasn't been exposed. Radio just gets narrower and narrower. I been around a long time, and I remember when you could hear all kinds of stuff on the radio. It was a lot broader than it is today. I have a hard time sifting through tons and tons of stuff I can't feel to find one thing that I like. It didn't used to be like that. There used to be a lot of stuff you could feel.

Directions In Music will be feeling it at Boston Symphony Hall on Sunday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. For tickets, $42.50-$32.50, visit www.bso.org or call 888.266.1200.