Hancock started playing the piano when he was just seven years old and started his career with the jazz band Miles Davis Quintet in 1963. “I didn’t choose jazz. It picked me,” he mused. “New York was the Mecca for jazz back in the day. Now there are two Meccas—New York and Los Angeles.” The music form has a rich history, believed to have originated in the African-American communities settled in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th century with blues and ragtime influences. Today, he says, jazz has become a spectrum, with a range of sub-genres, like jazz rap, which highlight the openness of the music form. “The life-blood of jazz is that it is open and inclusive.”

Reeves, who hails from a musical family, waxes eloquent about jazz, when asked what it means to her. “It’s soulful, pulsating, beautiful music that depends on improvisation, which blew me away when I first came across it,” she gushed. “Today, the voices of women are becoming more prominent, which is a great thing.” 

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Hancock said he doesn’t call himself a jazz musician. “What I really am is a human being. What I do is play music.” He asked why everyone wants to be famous, eliciting laughs. “The most important thing is to be a better person today than you were yesterday.” 

Jazz has always been known to be a “free” form of music, one that demands the art of improvisation. “It demands its own voice,” as Reeves put it. Hancock said that it flows from the heart. “Whatever happens, make it work,” he quipped—something that can be applied to life as well. “You can turn a mistake into a treasure.”