One of the funny things about jazz musicians is that they go to work in the evenings, about the same time that the rest of us are heading home. Likewise, their busy season is the summer, precisely because most of us are shaking sand out of our swim trunks and sticking plastic monkeys in our piña coladas.

The juiciest jazz events this summer are, as always, the major festivals of June and July, beginning with the avant-garde Vision Festival (June 10-15 at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center), where the veteran New Orleans saxophonist Kidd Jordan is the man of the year, and the more traditional Jazz in July series (July 22-31 at the 92nd Street Y), where the living master George Shearing will be honored.

Lodged in between is the main event, the JVC Jazz Festival (June 15-28, at venues all over town; see festivalnetwork.com for details), which features everything from the cutting edge to the conservative. The festival’s most anticipated tribute event, scheduled for June 21, is a 90thbirthday salute to the piano legend Hank Jones, starring the man himself.

In other birthday news, the venerable and versatile sax master Bob Wilber will appear at his 80th-birthday salute at Symphony Space on June 11. And lest anyone worry that 70 is too young to celebrate a birthday, Freddie Hubbard and Charles Lloyd will blow out candles at, respectively, Iridium (June 26-29) and the New York Society for Ethical Culture (June 28).

Whether as part of the JVC festival other concerts, all three of the millennial era’s gold-standard jazz singers will be presented in June, starting with Cassandra Wilson at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (June 7) and then the Blue Note two nights later. The other two, Dianne Reeves and Dee Dee Bridgewater, have inexplicably been scheduled for the same night at JVC (June 27). In any event, all three have released worthy new albums in the 2007-08 season, the latest being Ms. Wilson’s long-awaited standards collection, “Loverly” (Blue Note).

On the club scene, two new venues are rising out of the ashes of legendary neighborhood shrines. In Harlem, Minton’s Playhouse is being re-christened as a performance venue, although the schedule currently online is a little thin. In the Village, the former site of the Village Gate is now home to Le Poisson Rouge, which, in addition to hosting several JVC events (including Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and Charlie Haden’s outstanding Quartet West), will present three admirably eclectic double bills featuring an instrumentalist — beginning with the cellist Erik Friedlander (June 16), and followed by the free jazz saxophonist J.D. Allen (June 22), and harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda (June 30) — opening for singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones.

Those looking for a nightclub event worthy of a concert hall should take note of the Iridium’s full-scale salute to the drummer Max Roach (June 5-8), with a rotating cast directed by Roach’s longtime lieutenant, Odean Pope, and co-starring the brilliant saxophonist James Carter. Apart from honoring the late pioneer of percussion, Messrs. Pope and Carter will make for a stellar two-tenor team. Another two-tenor tryst to mark on the calendar is the teaming of George Coleman and Eric Alexander at Jazz Standard (June 26-29).

Taken as a whole, though, June could be called the month of the piano. It begins with Bill Charlap as he finishes his two-week run at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The Village Vanguard gets into the act on June 3 with a five-day presentation of the Eric Reed Quintet, followed by Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos (June 10-15), and finally the Fred Hersch Trio Plus 2 (June 24-29). In the meantime, Jon Cowherd will join drummer Brian Blade’s Fellowship on the keys (June 17-22). But the veteran pianist to catch in New York in June is Martial Solal at the Museum of Modern Art (June 14).

If big bands are your bag, the regulars at Birdland — including the Birdland Big Band directed by Tommy Igoe (Fridays), David Berger and the Sultans of Swing (Tuesdays), and Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra (Sundays) — will be joined this summer by the saxophonist-arranger Andy Farber and His Orchestra, featuring the dynamic vocalist Hilary Kole (also Sundays). Downtown, the Blue Note will present a summer big-band series with two “ghost” groups — the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band (June 24-29) and the Duke Ellington Orchestra (July 1-6) — and one under the baton of the very-much-alive trumpeter Charles Tolliver (July 8-13).

For those looking to escape the city, the 32nd Annual Jersey Jazzfest (June 8) will offer plenty of big bands, including an ambitious bill of two local acts, Swingadelic and the Jazz Lobsters.

And just when you think you can’t pack another jazz show into the summer, Sonny Rollins will appear at Central Park SummerStage on August 6. The performer who can follow him hasn’t been born yet.

wfriedwald@nysun.com