The Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 join forces on Sunset Center stage.

When mega-groups tour together, the players often are content to each play a set alone and then come together for a finale or two.

This won’t be the case when Take 6 and The Manhattan Transfer appear together in Carmel next week, as the two superpowers will perform over a dozen of each another’s tunes together. Combined, they boast more than 20 Grammys.

The Transfer is the elder of the two bands, having been formed in 1972 by their now-deceased founder Tim Hauser, who passed in 2014. Coming from a background of barbershop quartet and doo-wop tunes, the group took New York by storm in the ’70s appearing at avant-garde cabarets and achieving its first national hit covering the Friendly Boy’s gospel standard Operator from their eponymous debut album in 1975. In 1981, the Transfer became the first group ever to win Grammys in two different genres in the same year (Best Pop and Best Jazz Vocal Performances), a feat equaled seven years later when Take 6 scored Grammy wins for Best Jazz and Best Gospel Vocal Performances in 1988.

Take 6 was founded as a hobby and also by a singular vision, that of Claude McKnight, at Huntsville, Alabama’s Oakwood College, a Seventh Day Adventist school then known for its rich, gospel vocal music tradition.

“It seemed like everybody had a barbershop gospel quartet,” McKnight says. “So did I, but we wanted to be different.”

They rehearsed in a dorm bathroom, were overheard one day by Mark Kibble, who joined right in and quickly became the lead architect of the group’s sound and arrangements. A sixth voice was soon added, but when the group, then called Alliance, signed with Reprise Records/Warner Bros. in 1987, they found there was another group with the same name.

“We threw out a couple hundred names at each other, and Take 6 got the most votes,” McKnight says. “It pretty much was a play on the Take 5 jazz standard [by Dave Brubeck] along with the fact that there were six of us in the group.”

Now several decades later, both ensembles seem to revel in one another’s similar takes on the a cappella genre.

“We’ve been waiting to do this for so long,” Kibble says. “We’ve been fans for years, and now we actually get to do it.”

Expect an evening of intricate, closely-voiced, doo wop and jazz harmonies over infectious, finger-snapping, street corner rhythms that will keep your head bobbing and your feet tapping. Two times over.

The Summit – Take 6 meets The Manhattan Transfer 8pm Wednesday, Feb. 8. Sunset Center, San Carlos and Ninth, Carmel. $48-$69. 620-2048, sunsetcenter.org