Every season I find myself paying less attention to the Grammys and more to the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Program. The former seems increasingly trivial, not only in terms of relevance, but at an almost “American Idol” level of banality, where serious artists are pitted against one another in a horserace competition: Can you imagine being in Germany in 1870 and watching as Brahms, Liszt, and Wagner compete in a threeway showdown for “Best Long-Form Composition by a Composer with Cool Hair”?

The National Endowment for the Arts honors long-term achievements by time-honored artists, not flavors of the week, and there’s a part of me that’s optimistic enough to believe that every major musician of significant accomplishment has a chance to make the grade sooner or later.

On Tuesday, the NEA held a reception at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola to announce the 2008 jazz masters: Quincy Jones, Andrew Hill, Candido Camero, Tom McIntosh, Joe Wilder, and Gunther Schuller. The announcement was followed by a performance by the pianist and Jazz Master George Wein and his Newport All Stars, who are appearing at Dizzy’s for the rest of the week. Each year, the endowment’s six new masters are distinguished in official categories, as well as in what seem to most regular observers to be unofficial ones. Mr. Camero, the world-renowned, Cuban-born conguero, was honored as a “rhythm instrumentalist,” but he may actually be the beneficiary of a general effort to recognize one non-American each year (last year it was the pianist and composer Toshiko Akiyoshi).

Generally, there’s also one musician with a strong pop presence, such as Chick Corea, Ramsey Lewis, and, now, Mr. Jones (the only living honoree who did not attend the ceremony in person). Each new batch of masters also includes a wild card — I never could have predicted the appointment of Mr. McIntosh, a brilliant but lesser-known composer-arranger who only has one album, as far as I know, under his own name.

This year, I applaud the choices of Hill, who was informed of the honor shortly before his death in April; of Mr. Wilder, the venerable 85-year-old trumpeter who will be honored at a concert at Symphony Space on November 16; and of Mr. Schuller, the composer-conductor-historian-critic and French-horn player who was named as the 2008 Jazz Advocate.

I regret that the NEA wasn’t able, as it usually is, to include a woman or a singer (Sheila Jordan or Carol Sloan would have been my first choices) and I still can’t believe that Lee Konitz, who is in a class with Sonny Rollins as one of the great living improvisers, has yet to be honored. Still, no one named isn’t more than worthy.

When Mr. Wein and the Newport band took to the stage, I was looking forward to what promised to be a rare opportunity to hear some swing or traditional jazz in a mainstream club. Although the frontline consisted of two multifaceted modernists — the trumpeter Randy Brecker and the tenor saxophonist Lew Tabackin — the repertoire was mostly Ellingtonia and other swing standards, and the rhythm section consisted of the generically flexible guitarist Howard Alden, the bassist Peter Washington, and the drummer Kenny Washington.

Mr. Wein, who celebrated his 82nd birthday this week (cake was passed out and appreciatively consumed on Tuesday), began with two Ducal rompers, Billy Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately” and Ellington’s “What Am I Here For.” Mr. Wein played mostly in the full ensembles and in his own solos, but left a lot of the chordal playing behind the horns to Mr. Alden, and, on the whole, the group achieved a copasetic swing-bebop blend.

The leader then announced that Mr. Tabackin would take a solo feature with just bass and drums, since that was his preferred way to work, and the saxist essayed the bop standard “Tricotism.” I normally think of Mr. Tabackin as one of the outstanding disciples of the great Mr. Rollins, who put the tenor-bass-drums trio on the map, but this performance showed that he’s also learned a lot from the tune’s most famous interpreter, the late Lucky Thompson — even if he did throw in a left-field quote, Rollins-style, of the Looney Tunes theme, “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.”

At this point, Mr. Wein called for any jazz masters in the house to come forward and sit in on the Gershwin standard “Lady Be Good.” Unfortunately, they had apparently all forgotten their horns — Paquito D’Rivera held up his clarinet mouthpiece and informed us that the rest of it was in the pawnshop. However, Frank Wess, who turns 86 in January, approached the bandstand with his tenor sax in one hand and his cane in another. Propelled by Mr. Washigton’s powerful pounding, Mr. Wess took over and re-animated a group that was hardly suffering to begin with.

He then did something quite remarkable: A little more than a year ago, Mr. Wess was slowed somewhat by an illness, and I remember thinking last summer that his playing wasn’t up to its usual high standard. But on Tuesday, he delivered a remarkable reading of Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” replete with breathy romanticism on the opening ad-lib portion and incredible energy when the piece shifted tempo. In both sections, he interacted primarily with Mr. Alden’s guitar, and brought a standing ovation. Having experienced him live on hundreds of occasions during the last 30 years, I’ve never heard Frank Wess sound better.

It was Mr. Wein, however, who had the best line of the evening: He introduced “Tricotism” as a tune by the legendary bassist Oscar Pettiford, and then added, “If you don’t know who that is, you’re not a jazz master.”

wfriedwald@nysun.com