The Manhattan Transfer’s latest album is testament to this. An homage to one of the greatest pianists and keyboards masters in jazz, The Chick Corea Songbook has been in the group’s plans for almost as long as their trademark lush vocal harmony versions of songs such as Chanson d’Amour and Tuxedo Junction have been scoring hits with the public, if not longer.

“We first met Chick in the mid-1970s,” says the group’s Alan Paul down the line from Pordenone, in Italy, the first stop on the European tour that brings them to Perth next weekend to open the new Tay Jazz event that extends Dundee Jazz Festival upriver.

“Tim (Hauser) and Janis (Siegel) used to go and visit Chick and his wife, Gayle, and they always talked about doing something together. But for one reason or another, our respective schedules just never allowed this to work out, so it remained something that we’d speak about until this summer.”

Enter Yusuf Gandhi, chief executive of Four Quarters Entertainment, who 10 years ago had the idea of getting The Manhattan Transfer to arrange their favourite Corea tracks, but since the group were then under contract to another label, he shelved the idea. Come June 2009, the group were free agents and, says Paul, the time had come, although not too much time.

To listen to the album, you’d never know that it was arranged and recorded under what Paul acknowledges were less than ideal circumstances.

“We did the whole thing in two months,” he says. “We started by having each of the four of us choose 30 tunes that we wanted to cover. We’re all big Chick Corea fans but Chick’s catalogue is so vast and he goes out with so many different projects – electric, acoustic, solo piano and so on – that we had a job just settling on the repertoire.

“Some songs, Spain for example, we all wanted to do; others were things that Tim and I favoured. Then once we’d decided what to sing, we realised that half of the songs had lyrics but the other half needed lyrics, so we were having words written for some songs as we were recording others.

“On top of that we were laying down backing tracks in New York and Los Angeles and fitting in rehearsals in both cities between flying off for gigs in Europe. So, yeah, it was hectic.”

In the end they covered Corea on quite a few bases. There’s the Latin flavour of the original line-up of Corea’s 1970s group Return to Forever in Spain (given a very modern beat and treatment) and 500 Miles High, a cunningly reworked Space Circus (renamed Another Roadside Attraction) from RTF’s heavier period, and Time’s Lie from Corea’s spell as a sideman with saxophonist Stan Getz.

There are also arrangements of solo piano compositions such as Children’s Song #1 and works from later in the 1970s, including Armando’s Rhumba, with Corea himself rubber-stamping the project with the specially composed Free Samba.

“Getting some kind of continuity was important to us and we were very fortunate to actually have Chick play on, as well as write, Free Samba,” says Paul. “That plus the fact that Airto Moreira, Christian MacBride and Gary Novak, who have all played with Chick at different times, were able to contribute to our album, made it all the more satisfying and complete as a homage to a great musician.”

Under normal circumstances, The Manhattan Transfer would prefer to work without the time constraints that various tours, musicians’ schedules and optimum release dates put on The Chick Corea Songbook. Paul recalls working on their classic album from 1985, Vocalese, a tribute to the vocal style invented by the great Jon Hendricks in his Lambert, Hendricks and Ross trio that included the Count Basie Orchestra, Bobby McFerrin, McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie and Hendricks himself on its guest list.

“I think part of the reason for that album’s success was due to us being able to learn all the material before we went into the studio,” he says. “We actually took the songs we were planning to record out on a tour of clubs in the Los Angeles area and the music evolved on the stage. So by the time we got to the studio we’d worked out any kinks and really knew what we wanted the finished item to sound like.”

After 30 years together, more in the case of Paul, Hausier and Siegel, who were joined by Cheryl Bentyne when she replaced Laurel Masse in 1979, the group have evolved into a family, says Paul, and while they have to keep working hard to make those harmonies seem effortless, some elements of their music come together faster and more easily these days.

“We learn new material faster now,” he says. “I remember doing Four Brothers on our third album and it took a long time because we weren’t that familiar with the voicings we were using. Being better at reading music than we were back then also helps. Like any family we have our fights and disagreements but we’ve learned how to get along, to try and keep things objective and not to push the buttons that’ll cause an eruption – because we all have those.

“We’ve learned to appreciate what we like about each other and what we have together, that’s a gift that doesn’t happen often.”

The Manhattan Transfer play Perth Concert Hall on November 12. For information on Tay Jazz and Dundee Jazz Festival, log onto: www.jazzdundee.co.uk.