You can say what you like about the Village Vanguard, but its air-conditioning system works very well. As I descended from the sauna-like atmosphere of Seventh Avenue into what was now, on several levels, the coolest room in town, I was overwhelmed by a sense of giddy euphoria. Everyone in the room was feeling it too, particularly pianist Barry Harris.

What followed was one of the loosest – and most entertaining – sets of piano that I have heard in a long time. (And, as readers of this column know, I have been hearing a lot of piano this month.) Mr. Harris is, along with Kenny Barron and fellow Detroiter Hank Jones, one of the great living exponents of bebop piano. I hadn’t heard a whole evening with his trio in a while, however, and forgot how funny he can be.

One evening about 20 years ago, I heard Mr. Harris play a set of hardcore bop standards by Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, his two major inspirations. On Tuesday, no one was in the mood for anything serious, so he spent the whole evening playing standards with familiar lyrics.

The set reminded me of evenings at Mr. Harris’s own club-slash-classroom, the much-missed Jazz Cultural Theatre. A group of longtime Harris regulars – friends, fans, students – were present, and they needed no invitation to clap, snap, and hum along. At the end one even spontaneously alit on the Vanguard’s tiny stage and began doing Bob Fosse dance moves.

Mr. Harris began by imitating an announcer offstage, introducing the trio: Earl May on bass and Leroy Williams, his collaborator for many decades, on drums. He spoke of himself in the third person: “Tonight’s pianist, ladies and gentlemen, can actually take a Steinway and make it sound like an upright – there’s not many pianists who can do that!”

Mr. Harris seemed unable to make up his mind whether he felt like playing “Like Someone in Love” or “My Heart Stood Still,” so he played both – not exactly as a medley but more as a collage, in that he alternated between eight or four bars of one and then switched to the other. He did this throughout all three major stages of the number: rubato intro, in-tempo chorus, and improvisation. The piece could have been called “Like Someone’s Heart Stood Still.”

Mr. Harris attempted to get a little more serious with the second number, a slow, unaccompanied treatment of Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.” He got about halfway through, having done the intro and most of the chorus, and we were all waiting to see where he would take it. Then, all of a sudden – ring – someone’s cell phone went off! (Lorraine Gordon, the club’s owner, does not suffer such intrusions, and she glared in my direction to make sure it wasn’t mine.)

If Mr. Harris had been playing an uptempo or with a whole band, he probably would have been able to incorporate the rhythm of the ring tone into his solo. But considering that everyone was having a hard enough time concentrating as it was, he just stopped, telling the crowd, “If it’s God calling, then you can pick up – otherwise throw it away!” And he left the prelude decidedly un-kissed.

There was still plenty of great playing in store, however, and Mr. Harris continued to playfully use verses and introductions. He eased into the warhorse “Tea for Two” by starting with a luxuriant treatment of the verse. He also raced through “Star Eyes,” with its famous Charlie Parker intro vamp. In both cases, even the ultrafast main chorus and improv were gentle – he had Erroll Garner, not Powell, on his mind. Following “Tea for Two,” someone yelled, “Play that again!” and darned if he didn’t lay another chorus on us.

Mr. Harris did succeed in putting down two absolutely gorgeous ballads without any intrusions or shenanigans: “Some Other Spring,” from the Billie Holiday songbook, and “My Devotion,” written by Jimmy Dorsey’s guitarist, Roc Hillman, but recorded by Powell. In between numbers, he launched into an unfamiliar melody that left both Mr. May and myself with puzzled looks on our faces. “Just a little something from Chopin,” he explained. He wound up with two more bop fixtures, “Rhythm” (as in “All God’s Chillun Got -“) and Parker’s B-flat blues, “Bird Feathers.”

The set ended as it began, with a group of Barry Harris regulars humming along like the Swingle Singers. As I left, I looked at Ms. Gordon, who said, rather sternly, “I could do without that anvil chorus!” But Mr. Harris, still seated at the keyboard and functioning as his own intermission pianist, began to play “Sweet Lorraine.” “He’s trying to win me over,” she laughed. It was obviously working.

Until July 3 (178 Seventh Avenue South, between W. 11th and Perry Streets, 212-255-4037).