Benny Carter once said his “Kansas City Suite” received more attention than his other long-form works because he had the foresight to label it a “suite” – that meant it was fair game for new recordings and interpretations, just as classical music is. John Coltrane didn’t call “A Love Supreme” a suite in its title, but that’s how he described the work to his wife, Alice, just after he finished it. Now two new interpretations of Coltrane’s 1964 classic are available – both by musicians named Marsalis.

Branford Marsalis recorded the work in 2002 for his album “Footsteps of Our Fathers” (Marsalis Music 613301) and has just released a concert version, “Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ Live in Amsterdam” (613309), a double-disc package containing an audio CD and a DVD of the same performance. Wynton Marsalis did his orchestral adaptation of “A Love Supreme” with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra around the same time, and it’s the first release through Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new arrangement with the independent label Palmetto Records (2106). Branford Marsalis will probably perform part of “A Love Supreme” when he and his quartet play the Village Vanguard this week.

Sibling rivalry? I doubt it. When I ran into Wynton Marsalis at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola last week, he assured me it was just a coincidence. The two versions of “A Love Supreme” are not about their relationship to each other, but to John Coltrane. It’s obvious that both Marsalises deeply love the work, yet they respect Coltrane too much to merely recreate or “cover” what he played. They interpret Coltrane’s music in the same spirit that Coltrane himself interpreted the music of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

“A Love Supreme” is frequently cited as the greatest of extended works for a small ensemble in the jazz idiom, and Coltrane’s recording is frequently cited as being, along with Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” one of the two most celebrated albums in all of jazz. The two albums have other things in common, mostly notably Coltrane’s participation. Both also introduce their most famous themes, rather unconventionally, on string bass: On “Kind of Blue,” Paul Chambers introduces the two-note motif of “So What”; on “Acknowledgement,” the opening movement of Coltrane’s work, Jimmy Garrison thunders out the four distinct notes of the riff later chanted with the words “A Love Supreme.”

More than anything, it’s this four note lick, repeated at length at the end of the first movement, that explains why “A Love Supreme” is more widely loved than Coltrane’s other full-length works of religious devotion, such as “Meditations.” He plays the figure over and over, as if he were chanting a mantra or davening (a tactic that recalls “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop,” written by George Russell for Dizzy Gillespie), then murmurs it verbally via an overdub. The second movement, “Resolution,” also opens with a very strong, clearly defined melody, one slightly reminiscent of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing.”

On his new recording, Branford Marsalis downplays the famous lick. Wynton, however, emphasizes it. In his big-band orchestration, nearly all of the horns repeat it individually in highly vocalized timbres: Clarinet, muted trumpet, baritone sax, trombone, tenor, all seem to be murmuring “a love supreme.”

This is actually the second big-band orchestration of “A Love Supreme” that I know of; in 2001 the veteran Slide Hampton did one for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra. That version left many Coltrane purists indignant, as if the very process of rendering the work in an orchestral format trivialized it. I wouldn’t accuse either Mr. Marsalis or Mr. Hampton of that, but Mr. Marsalis’s version certainly casts this austere work in all sorts of bright, fruity colors.

I can understand objections to this: Coltrane, hardly known for his whimsical nature, was being even more serious than usual on “A Love Supreme,” a work that spoke of his “spiritual awakening.” Wynton Marsalis, however, is being true to his own self here, and as I’ve opined in these pages before, he’s at his best when letting his sunny side show. Coltrane’s asceticism would seem forced coming from him.

Branford Marsalis, a tenor saxophonist working in the same format as Coltrane (in his case, with Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and Jeff Watts on drums), faced a different challenge. His reading is just different enough: His sound is his own, there’s no mistaking him for Coltrane or anybody else, and he has his own approach.

For one thing, he goes “outside” into the realm of overblown notes and non tempered sounds much less than Coltrane did (especially in his alternate versions). Where Coltrane’s drummer Elvin Jones opened famously with a Chinese gong, Mr. Watts commences the Marsalis reading with a cymbal crash. Mr. Marsalis also stretches the rubato intro several minutes longer than Coltrane.

Branford Marsalis has already played “A Love Supreme” more often than its creator. Coltrane is thought to have performed the complete “Love Supreme” only twice, including his session in the Rudy Van Gelder recording studio in December 1964. Because Coltrane didn’t feel the work was appropriate for most of the nightclub-like venues in which he worked, he is known to have played it live on just one occasion, at a 1965 concert in France.

This material is included in the definitive two-CD package, 2002’s “A Love Supreme Deluxe Edition” (Impulse! 314 589 945-2).Also in that package are four alternate takes of the first two movements, “Acknowledgement” and “Resolution.” The first uses an expanded ensemble adding Archie Shepp on tenor and Art Davis on bass to the classic quartet of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones.

“A Love Supreme” has also inspired a number of vocal treatments. The San Francisco-based singer Susan Pittson has set lyrics to the entire 33-minute suite, excerpts of which appear on “Resolution: A Remembrance Of John Coltrane,” Vineland VLCD 7755). A more openly theological rendition, of only a single movement, is Kurt Elling’s “Resolution” (on “Man in the Air,” Blue Note 80834). He takes Coltrane’s piety, as well as his declaration “I believe in all religions,” very seriously – yet, as always, Mr. Elling is part preacher, part hipster.

None of these re-interpretations will replace the original Impulse! album in anyone’s estimation. But I feel the same way about them that that I do about the alternate Coltrane versions. They aren’t meant to replace what Coltrane gave us but to enhance our appreciation of it. To this day, Coltrane’s 40-year-old masterpiece continues to, in the words of his former employer and collaborator Miles Davis, “Reach out and influence those people who are into peace.”

Branford Marsalis until January 23 (Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at West 11th Street, 212-255-4037).