He’s a wily man, that Chick Corea, and he knows the value of contrast and surprise.

The 65-year-old pianist, composer, and bandleader, who is headlining this week at the Blue Note, is the rare jazz musician with the following of a rock star. He is best known for his reputation-establishing tenure with Miles Davis’s first fusion band, and for his 1970s fusion supergroup, Return to Forever.Yet his first influence was Bud Powell, and he is as fine a bebop pianist as he allows himself to be. He made arguably the most valuable music of his career with the free-jazz quartet Circle. And he has also composed and performed classical music, including a symphonic setting of his most famous tune, “Spain.”

Given his history of baffling expectations, I’m almost willing to believe Mr. Corea deliberately bombed with his 2004 album, “To the Stars.” Credited to Mr. Corea’s so-called Elektric Band (consider it a warning when bad spelling is employed) and inspired by the science fiction novels of L. Ron Hubbard, “To the Stars” was trite, electronic bubblegum music that sounded like a cheesy video-game soundtrack.

But Mr. Corea’s latest effort, “The Ultimate Adventure,” also inspired by Hubbard’s stories, is what he does best: accessible jazz with engaging rhythms and catchy melodies that don’t insult anyone’s intelligence. Here he combines acoustics with electronics, and infuses straight-ahead modern jazz grooves with a Latin tinge. Because Hubbard drew on “The Arabian Nights” in his writing, Mr. Corea has also thrown some Middle Eastern rhythms and tonalities into the mix.

The new album and the shows at the Blue Note mark Mr. Corea’s reunion with percussionist Airto Moreira, the co-star of Return to Forever and a member of the Miles Davis Quintet of 1970. Bassist Eddie Gomez worked extensively with Mr. Corea in the late 1970s, but this is the first time the threesome has worked together as a trio, which the leader calls Forever Returns.

Considering that Mr. Corea is of Hispanic descent, Mr. Moreira is Brazilian, and Mr. Gomez is Puerto Rican, it seemed only natural that Forever Returns should open their late set on Tuesday night with a piece in an Iberian vein. It began with what seemed like random noises: Mr. Moreira chanted doggerel in various vocal registers and played odd percussion instruments in irregular rhythms while Mr. Corea on his synthesizers hit a variety of musical colors not found in nature. Then, Mr. Corea’s acute sense of contrast came into play. He gradually transitioned from this amorphous mass of unrelated sounds to a very clear melody, with sharp, almost exaggerated Spanish accents. At times, this reminded me of the lounge-music maestro Juan Garcia Esquivel, who was sort of the Mexican Spike Jones.

Mr. Corea moved over to the Blue Note’s acoustic Bosendorfer for two standards, Richard Rodgers’s “With a Song in My Heart” and James Van Heusen’s “But Beautiful.” The latter began with an extended intro-solo from Mr. Gomez, then transitioned from one section to the next in a subtle, organic manner. Mr. Moreira left aside his battery of Latin percussion devices in favor of plain old North American trap drums, on which he played all sorts of unexpected patterns that complemented the piano’s melody lines. Mr. Corea kept these melodies front and center, spinning variations on them rather than outand-out improvisation.

The trio finished the set with another wild, abstract intro, which seemed kind of redundant, as if they were opening the set all over again.This led into a highly original reading of the Antonio Carlos Jobim standard “Desafinado.” The song is usually done in a gently undulating Brazilian style, but the trio subjected it to the sharper rhythms of Spanish, Cuban, or Argentinian music. For an encore, Mr. Corea treated the crowd to one of Return to Forever’s most famous tunes, “500 Miles High,” which I found myself humming late into the night.

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On Monday night at Birdland, the pianist and singer Billy Stritch offered a tribute to Mel Torme, accompanied by bassist David Fink and drummer Mike Berkowitz. What made this performance special wasn’t so much that Mr. Stritch handpicked a dozen of Torme’s signature songs and original compositions, but that he transcribed and replicated Torme’s original orchestrations, even while singing them in a way that was distinctly his own.

Mr. Stritch started with Torme’s longtime opener, “Just One of Those Things,” carefully alternating between Cole Porter’s lyrics and Tormestyle scat, and easing, as Torme always did, into “Green Dolphin Street.” While never imitating Torme’s one-ofa-kind voice, he captured his essence – the semi-improvised passages, the vocal approximation of a trumpet flutter, the surprising modulations and tempo changes. In all, Mr. Stritch delivered 75 solid minutes in a Mel-ish mood. I hope this was not a one-shot performance.

Forever Returns until April 16 at Blue Note (131 W.3rd Street,between Sixth Avenue and MacDougal Street, 212-475-8592).