Hancock

The Hancock Chamber Players gave over most of yesterday afternoon's concert to the Alexander Quartet, which was making its Philadelphia debut. Young men of considerable accomplishment, the Alexander's members have been receiving compliments since the group won the Portsmouth (England) International String Quartet Competition four years ago. Yesterday's performance at the Fleisher Art Memorial proved the Hancock to have good taste in selecting music and its musician friends; quartets by Debussy, Benjamin Britten and Hugo Wolf were delivered confidently, securely and with that degree of expressivity that demands participation.

Remember the beginning of The Incredibles ? Superheroes banned from performing their crime-fighting, life-saving stunts because of law suits from disgruntled citizens, costly damages incurred in the line of rescue, accusations that the caped crusader with the X-ray vision was a Peeping Tom? Well, the Will Smith title-character in Hancock has the same problem. Here's a guy who can pinky-lift tractor-trailers, leap tall buildings in a single bound, rocket through the skies and bounce bullets off his chest - basically all that Superman stuff - and yet the public hates him. He's rude, surly, indifferent.

Artist Alejandro Flores of Mexico talks about the mural he painted at Hancock and Diamond Streets. The mural was dedicated yesterday.

Lower Gwynedd Township Police Chief Edward Hancock was continuing to recover in a Bradenton, Fla., hospital room on Tuesday from a severe heart attack he suffered March 5 while vacationing. The department is under the supervision of its veteran second-in-command, detective Kenneth Bright. Township Supervisor Richard Landis revealed Hancock's illness at a township supervisors' workshop meeting Monday night. Landis said that while Hancock had been in intensive care, "he's making a miraculous recovery, he's been putting on his shoes and he's asking to go home.

LOOK, UP in the sky. It's a bird! It's a plane. No! It's . . .  Stuporman? Otherwise known as Hancock, a superhero who doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning, and as high-concepts go, this one has potential. Especially with high-achieving, image-conscious Will Smith cast amusingly against type as the surly Hancock, a guy in slacker garb who doesn't show up in the nick of time. He shows up late, with liquor on his breath, and generally has a low opinion of the people he rescues (as well as the people he doesn't)

On the hottest day of the year in the city, Brooke Turner (left) and Marquan Hylick kept cool with buckets of water on Porter Street near Hancock in South Philadelphia yesterday. Summer may start today, but the temperature yesterday reached 95 degrees. Accu-Weather says relief is in sight.

A Superior Court judge yesterday threw out a two-year-old whistle-blowers' lawsuit against Oaklyn's current and former police chiefs, saying top brass did not retaliate against two former officers after the officers accused then-Lt. Christopher Ferrari of misusing special state funds. Ferrari is Oaklyn's current police chief. Judge Samuel L. Supnick of Camden County Superior Court said a complaint lodged by former Sgt. William Hancock and Patrolman John Warner had no merit. It was the second time in two weeks that a whistle-blower suit involving police filed by attorney Clifford Van Syoc had been thrown out by Supnick.

Justin Townes Earle "Hear my father on the radio, singing . . . " Thus Justin Townes Earle begins his fourth album, Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now . That's not the only time Steve Earle is alluded to in the 10-song set. Not that the son is trying to ride the father's coattails. Since his 2008 debut, the younger Earle has authoritatively established his own musical identity. This time, young Earle brings in some horns to add a Memphis soul feel to his Americana.

Friday evening got off to a comically inauspicious start when Herbie Hancock, after warmly welcoming the audience to the Kimmel Center and flattering Philadelphia on its love of culture and rhythm, broke his microphone stand. Grasping it, he joked, "If I was a rock star, I'd throw this out into the audience. " The stand stayed firmly on the stage, but while he may not be a rock star, Hancock, now 71, certainly looked the part by the end of the night, striding on stage for an encore playing his funky Headhunters hit "Chameleon" on his Roland AX-Synth keytar.

Stacy Schwab is a fifth-grade teacher at the John Hancock Demonstration School in Northeast Philadelphia On a recent morning, as the second bell rang promptly at 8:28, I walked out the door into a schoolyard full of about 500 kindergarten through fifth-grade students, all socializing quietly in lines. My eyes were immediately drawn to the spot where the sun was shining on a small group of first graders standing near the flag waiting to lead the student body in the Pledge of Allegiance.

WHEN YOU'RE Herbie Hancock, you can do . . . whatever. Make the music you want. Tour when you want (he's at the Mann tonight). Even veer off at age 70 into whole new gigs - starting your own record label, serving as international goodwill ambassador for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, taking on programming duties as the Creative Chair for Jazz at the L.A. Philharmonic. A true legend, Hancock has a long history as one of jazz's most influential and forward-thinking keyboardists, hearkening back to his classic "cool school" sideman stints with Miles Davis and the "Maiden Voyage" of his own career as a front man in the early 1960s.

Number crunchers will probably look at Thursday night's Herbie Hancock/Lang Lang concert at the Mann Center as a successful experiment. The show - and it was a show - drew 6,800 listeners, the biggest crowd of this late-out-of-the-box Philadelphia Orchestra summer at the Mann. But what also matters was the audience count as the last note sounded - quite a different number. Hundreds left as the 2-hour-and-45-minute concert wore on, yet the pianists seemed to be operating on the premise that more was better.

Even by the hyper-individualistic standards of the piano world, jazzman Herbie Hancock and classicist Lang Lang are as unorthodox as duo-piano pairings get. Put them together with the almost-never-heard Ralph Vaughan Williams Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, and Thursday's final program of the Philadelphia Orchestra's Mann Center season also has the greatest curiosity factor. What makes the most sense is the pair's collaboration on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. They played an abbreviated version on the 2008 Grammy Awards telecast and are now touring Europe and the United States, using it as a jumping-off point for improvisation.

PIANISTS Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock hail from vastly different musical worlds, their respective classical and jazz identities as wildly disparate as their origins in China and Chicago. Yet combining their artistry for an international tour was a brilliant idea, attracting two audiences and emphasizing the universality of music. After warming up in five European cities, the pair will visit the Mann Center to wrap up the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer season next Thursday. "Herbie and I became good friends after the [2008]

"It's terrifying. " Will Smith talks with his hands, his eyes wide and smiling big as he describes the emotional impact of his new movie, "Seven Pounds," a romantic tragedy about a man putting his life right after a terrible mistake. "What is the difference between depression and joy, in the face of loss?" It's a serious idea the fun-loving Philadelphia native admits he's been exploring in his recent roles in "I Am Legend" and "Hancock. " For Smith, 40, the Ben Thomas character in "Seven Pounds" - the second film he's made with director Gabriele Muccino ("The Pursuit of Happyness")

When Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham heard of the Tuesday death of community activist James P. Shields, she wrote to a relative: "Kensington has never been an easy place to transform, but there was no one better at it than Jim. "He fought all of the obstacles and began to bring Kensington closer to its glory days almost more than any person I know. "It was more than a pleasure to try to help him in any way that I could. " Mr. Shields, 70, who worked on revitalizing the Norris Square neighborhood, died of lung cancer at a sister's home in Horsham.

That drunken, cussin' Hancock? It's just Dad Will Smith's family is cool with his antihero character in Hancock, the Philly-born screen star says. Unlike the characters he has played in other summer blockbusters, Hancock is not a 100 percent squeaky-clean role model for the youth of America, or anywhere else. He drinks, swears, mouths off - and goes to prison. "Fortunately, our kids are in the business, so they kind of understand," the 39-year-old actor told Associated Press Television News at the red-carpet premiere of the film.