OTTAWA - Herbie Hancock surprised Ottawa Jazz Festival goers at Confederation Park last night with a show that was light on jazz.

Instead, this giant of jazz focussed his titanic musical imagination on a concert made up of reworkings of songs by John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, ob Marley, Peter Gabriel and others that might have been a little lightweight for Herbie's fans, but went down as smooth as an iced frappacino on a hot night for everyone else.

But then, what did you expect out of a man who's been pretty much doing whatever he wanted to for the last 40 year?

Hancock's been reinventing himself himself ever since he was a part of Miles Davis's quintet in the 1960s, but Hancock made the transition from bop to pop effortlessly with the funk of "Watermelon Man" and later even scoring a major dance hit in the 1984 with "Rockit" and appe.

He's been exploring the fringes of pop's musical possibilities, including a Grammy Award-winning album of Joni Mitchell covers called "River: The Joni Letters" and now, his latest incarnation with "The Imagine Project", a startlingly inventive look at some of the most spiritually-uplifting songs of the last 20 years, and still make it sound like jazz.

Face it, Hancock is such an elegant musician, he could cover Kiss's "Love Gun" album and still smell like a serious jazz man.

For its Canadian premiere last night, Hancock, on keyboards and laptop programming and his band Tal Wilkenfeld on bass (remember her from Jeff Beck's gig at Bluesfest in 2009?) with guitarist Lionel Loueke, Greg Phillinganes on keys, and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.

After opening with a long, full-frontal jazz jam, they settled into more of a pop groove with "17s" and "Watermelon Man" before introducing vocalist Kristina Train for a horribly elegant Manhattan cover of Joni Mitchell's "Court & Spark" and a funky version of John Lennon's "Imagine" onwhich the 70-year-old Hancock showed flashes of his improvisational brilliance.

Playing pop songs of love and protest seemed to put Hancock into the mood to talk about the G8 meetings in Toronto this weekend and world peace.

"We're all one family," he reminded us.

Then, sensing he and the band were onto a good thing from a large and appreciative crowd, Hancock skipped a medley of older instrumentals to focus on the newer material including a sentimental version of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up", "Tamatant" and Bob Marley's "Exodus", "(La Tierre)", an Irish reinvention of Bob Dylan's "Times They Are A'Changin'" and "Change Is Gonna Come".

He encored with "Space Captain".

David Sanborn headlines the Jazz Festival's Concerts Under the Stars tonight in Confederation Park.

denis.armstrong@sunmedia.ca