Along with Maiden Voyage, Empyrean Isles represents Herbie Hancock’s finest work for Blue Note. Empyrean Isles is Hancock’s fourth album for the label and though only comprising four tracks is a classic. Opening with ‘One Finger Snap’, it’s immediately clear the album pushes Freddie Hubbard into the solo spotlight. Then a Blue Note artist in his own right, Hubbard often seemed to present the best realisation of his talent when playing as a sideman for others – as this track reveals. The song has become something of a jazz standard – one of the best realisations of the song’s potential by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band. Today, this quartet would be regarded as a supergroup. The key track is on side two – ‘Cantaloupe Island’. Hubbard shines against Hancock’s repeated two-bar riff, an integral part of this 16-bar composition – four bars Fm7, four bars Db7, four bars Dm7 and four bars Fm7. Simple stuff, but the essence is in the performance – this modal masterpiece would later inspire Us3 at the height of the Acid Jazz craze in 1993 to come up with ‘Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)’ with a widely admired solo by trumpeter Gerard Presencer.