Herbie Hancock (left) and Chick Corea perform head-to-head at The Kennedy Center on Friday. Sitting between them: a combined 34 Grammys. (Kyle Gustafson/For The Washington Post)

If ovations were cherry blossoms, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock would have been up to their knees in petals at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Friday night. Yet, as pleased as they were with the resounding response, there were moments during the nearly two-hour, sold-out performance when the jazz-piano legends seemed to find even greater delight in each other’s company and in the playful gamesmanship that ensued.

It’s been nearly 40 years since the release of “An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea: In Concert,” a landmark compilation of live tracks that still serves as a template for the duo’s live performances. Friday night’s concert, presented by Washington Performing Arts, reminded listeners time and again that some jazz virtuosos seem destined to share the stage. At one point, in fact, the pianists marveled at how their careers initially interlocked a half-century ago. First, in the early 1960s, Hancock replaced Corea in Mongo Santamaria’s band; then, several years later, Corea replaced Hancock in Miles Davis’s group.

These days, Corea, 73, and Hancock, who turned 75 on Sunday, are all about mutual admiration, and their engaging camaraderie onstage couldn’t be more evident. How best to elicit a smile, a laugh or, better yet, a startled expression from a distinguished peer? Some surefire maneuvering — and outmaneuvering — came into play Friday night. Tumultuous crescendos surged forward, only to stop on a dime. A solitary note hovered near the end of a coda, toying with listener expectations and thwarting a timely resolution. Countless countermelodies surfaced in myriad forms, snugly fitting into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Read more here

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