The Jazz at Lincoln Center fall gala Monday night was jazz’s equivalent of a clip show. Billing itself as a celebration of the 25 years since Jazz at Lincoln Center founder and artistic director Wynton Marsalis left his native New Orleans to join Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in 1980, the concert ably compressed a quarter-century into two hours. Mr. Marsalis played his trumpet in duos, quartets, septets, and with a full orchestra; the scope of the music presented ranged from blues to ballet, from swing standards to string quartets.

The evening began with a presentation by “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, who drew a huge laugh from the crowd by showing photos of the man of the hour sporting a massive afro in his high school yearbook. The show’s narration, written by Geoffrey Ward, stressed Mr. Marsalis’s early goal, as stated in that yearbook, to “transcend the @#$!! music being played today” – in other words, to overcome the commercialized pop of that era and find new audiences for bebop, swing, and Dixieland. Not only has Mr. Marsalis succeeded in that goal, he has also, in the last 15 years or so, helped jazz earn the same kind of cultural and academic respect that classical music has long enjoyed.

Mr. Marsalis began with a tune from his first album, “Hesitation,” which consisted mostly of a back-and-forth exchange of four-bar phrases with the great tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano. Backed by bassist Carlos Enriquez and Mr.Marsalis’s drum-playing brother, Jason, the two horn players matched each other tit for tat, even following each other into the altissimo register, where few horns dare to tread.

After a speech by filmmaker Ken Burns, the Marsalis Septet, prominently featuring the exceptional trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, essayed the blues “What Have You Done?” which the trumpeter wrote for Mr. Burns’s documentary “Unforgivable Blackness.”

The evening’s experiments with classical forms, unfortunately, were anti-climactic. Two dancers from the Alvin Ailey company performed an excerpt from Mr. Marsalis’s ballet “Sweet Release,” which featured both a female and a male solo but ended before the dancers could get together for the expected pas de deux. And Mr. Marsalis’s string quartet, “At the Octoroon’s Ball,” didn’t quite live up to its name: It was totally European, whereas a truly octoroonish piece would combine elements of black (jazz) and white (classical) traditions.

The program also failed to deliver on its promise of two star singers, Cassandra Wilson and Diana Krall. Ms. Wilson didn’t make it, and Ms. Krall’s number, “East of the Sun” was disappointing compared to the marvelous rendition of “Basin Street Blues” she performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Higher Ground” benefit concert two months ago.On “Basin Street,”she did what she does best, singing the melody straight with lots of feeling, whereas on “East of the Sun,” she interjected too much scat and unnecessary decorations.

Contrastingly, the gospel singer Kim Burrell and the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra performed two fine religious songs from Mr. Marsalis’s oratorio “Blood on the Fields,” proving that this over-long, over-heavy composition has some outstanding individual segments.The performers successfully delineated the difference between the 19th-century spiritual “Oh We Have a Friend in Jesus” and the 20th-century gospel song “God Don’t Like Ugly,” delivering the second in rollicking, Charlie Mingus-like 6/8 time.

Indeed, like Mingus, Mr. Marsalis likes to have his musicians get rowdy, with hand-claps, foot-stamps, and chanting. Mr. Marsalis employed this on at least three pieces Monday night, and it was consistently effective, especially on “The Caboose.” This finale to Mr. Marsalis’s 1999 suite, “Big Train,” remains, for me at least, his most successful extended composition.

The highlight of the evening was Mr. Marsalis’s sumptuous duet with the great pianist Hank Jones on “Embraceable You,” in which the musicians set out to capture both the whimsicality and emotional intensity of Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines’s “Weatherbird.” Mr. Marsalis displayed a soaring, Pops-like tone, and Mr. Jones played with his trademark shimmering elegance. Even though this combination isn’t part of the trumpeter’s past, Mr. Marsalis left us all with hopes that a full-length collaboration with Hank Jones is somewhere in his immediate future.

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Later this week at Rose Hall, Mr. Marsalis will perform with a full string orchestra – a format he has worked with only infrequently, namely on his 1984 album “Hot House Flowers.” The “Wynton With Strings” concerts will no doubt draw upon arrangements of standards by Berklee jazz orchestration guru Robert Freedman, as well as material from Mr. Marsalis’s 1998 orchestral project, “The Midnight Blues.” We will see if a dozen or so strings can accomplish as much in terms of accompanying Wynton Marsalis as Hank Jones can do all by himself.

“Wynton With Strings” will be performed November 17, 18 & 19 (1 Columbus Circle, 212-721-6500).