Herbie and Wayne

More on last week's all-star Wayne Shorter tribute, and the relationship at its core.

Wayne Shorter with Herbie Hancock, in a still from ‘Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity’

As far as anyone can recall, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock first met at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, recording Donald Byrd’s Free Form. The session took place on Dec. 11, 1961. By the time Blue Note got around to releasing the album five years later, Hancock and Shorter were members of the exalted Miles Davis Quintet, and the former had played on the latter’s Speak No Evil. The magical meld was underway.

Last week I traveled to Los Angeles to witness “Herbie Hancock Celebrates Wayne Shorter,” an all-star convocation at the Hollywood Bowl. I also spent a good amount of time with Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, a three-part doc now on Amazon Prime, which naturally features insights from Hancock, and footage of the two in dialogue.

On Friday, which would have been Shorter’s 90th birthday, NPR Music published my critic’s notebook about the concert and the film, which offered what I see as two distinct but complementary perspectives on the man and his creative legacy. Today I want to go a little deeper into the kinship at the heart of the Hollywood Bowl tribute. A few other commentators, like

Michelle Mercer

, will have more personal insight on the matter (and I look forward to her report from L.A.) — but I’ll share my own thoughts here, taking the measure of last week’s cultural immersion as well as a few close encounters with herbieandwayne, as Ben Ratliff once christened the duo. What lived at the heart of their hookup, musically? Why does it still feel so pivotal?