Thursday, 28 May

It was certainly a canny move to snare Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea for the opening night concert of the 2015 Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Few people interested in music, let alone jazz, would be unfamiliar with these names. Now in their mid-seventies – though both looking sprightly for their age – they have, between them, clocked up more than a century of music-making. More significantly, both have remained creative forces throughout that time, producing an endless stream of new compositions and recordings.

Nowhere was this creative spirit more evident than in their opening piece. Standing onstage at Hamer Hall before a cheering and ecstatic crowd, Chick Corea began with an announcement: ‘We are going to start with nothing, and see if we can turn it into something.’ The two pianists, seated facing each other at their grand pianos, then led off with a long and daring improvisation. It was immediately clear how closely they listened and responded to one another, swiftly following leads and developing ideas in such a way that the end result could have been mistaken for a notated composition.