When you go to hear a band of famous musicians at a major jazz club, you usually bring with you a set of expectations. This week, the alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe is headlining at the Blue Note with a group billed as his “All-Stars.” I think of Mr. Blythe as on the very sharp cutting edge between hard bop and “outside” free-jazz playing, while saxophonist Dewey Redman and guitarist James Blood Ulmer are both primarily known for their collaborations with Ornette Coleman. So I was expecting some very fiery avantgarde jazz.

Instead, the quintet, which also featured the Hammond organist Lonnie Smith and drummer Jeff Tain Watts, was in a distinctly mellow mood on the opening set of their second night. The group was essentially playing what has become known as “soul jazz,” in which acoustic horns play on top of an electric rhythm section and improvisations are uninhibited yet avoid the distempered shouts and squeals of free jazz.

When Mr. Blythe began with a bluesy, medium tempo called “As of Now,” I thought the All-Stars were just warming up. But this turned out to be the fastest tune of the four played. “As of Now” was a simple melody that gave the four soloists the basic material to build long-form improvisations, as Mr. Blythe contrasted jagged, two-note phrases with long, breathless lines. Mr. Blythe and Mr. Redman occasionally introduced distortion into their playing, but nothing went down that would make anybody’s date feel uncomfortable.

The second tune was the slower “Faceless Woman” (“you know who you are,” Mr. Blythe told the crowd), which he counted off in six. Mr. Blythe played three distinct sections, first stating the melody on the lower end of the horn, then improvising mostly in the upper register. After a diminuendo he surprised me by returning with another solo, this one mostly in the mid-range. And the turban-clad Mr. Smith caught everyone off-guard when he played a long minor passage that sounded like Middle Eastern music and put me in mind of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Song of India.”

After two originals, the last two pieces were a pair of standards, “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” and “What’s New.” Mr. Blythe (whose teacher was a member of the Jimmy Lunceford reed section) was originally raised on swing alto players like Johnny Hodges, and the Ellington blues gave him a chance to show those influences. He started slow and built up to a scream or two, but he climaxed the solo before anyone got hurt. Mr. Ulmer, whose solo on the previous tune had been a Bill Frissell like soundscape, returned to his own blues roots with a single-note solo straight out of the Mississippi Delta.

By “What’s New,” Mr. Blythe and Mr. Redman were in a very romantic mood indeed, and Mr. Blythe contrasted Bob Haggart’s familiar melody with an attractive counter figure that he weaved in and out of the tune. (Mr. Blythe includes a number of soulful treatments of standards, including Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” on “Exhale,” his latest of four albums for Savant.) Mr. Redman played a breathy ballad solo of the sort associated with the followers of Ben Webster.

With only the two saxophones soloing, the number was concise and to the point, with no wasted motion – as, indeed, was the entire set.