Good vibes are in the air. Look around you — can’t you feel them? Two of the major living masters of the vibraphone, Teddy Charles and Joe Locke, are playing concurrent engagements in New York, at the Village Vanguard and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, respectively. Clearly, somebody was well aware that this spring marks the centennial of the two founding fathers who introduced the mallet instruments — xylophone and vibraphone — to jazz: Red Norvo and Lionel Hampton, who were born within a few weeks of each other in March 1908.

Yet Messrs. Charles (who turns 80 next month) and Locke (who hits 50 next year) have more in common than their instrument. They are both hard-blowing, risk-taking improvisers, well equipped to jam for chorus after chorus. But, at the same time, they have always kept their focus on the wider horizons beyond their individual solos.

Mr. Charles was not only one of the major mallet men of the high bebop era (on a par with Milt Jackson and Terry Gibbs), but was well-known for his own writing, as well as for collaborating with the heavyweight jazz composers of his day. Gil Evans, George Russell, and Charles Mingus all contributed to his masterpiece album of 1956, “The Teddy Charles Tentet,” and he was a founding member of Mingus’s Jazz Workshop.

Likewise, Mr. Locke always makes a point to showcase his playing and his groups within a larger context: In 1994, he recorded the milestone album “Moment to Moment: The Music of Henry Mancini,” and followed it with an equally well-assembled collection of new takes on movie themes, “Sound Tracks.” His new album, “Live at JazzBaltica” with the Brazilian group Trio da Paz, is also conceptually driven.

Mr. Locke’s current show at Dizzy’s, which features his longtime piano collaborator, Geoffrey Keezer, and the drummer Clarence Penn, also uses the Mancini songbook as a launching point. But although the leader includes several of the 1994 arrangements, he has made an important addition to the lineup: the West Coast-based vocalist Kenny Washington. At the early show on Tuesday, Mr. Washington sang three excellent ballads, starting with the overheard but still beautiful “Moon River” and the neglected but still beautiful “Moment to Moment.” He also scatted on two numbers, including the opener “The Pink Panther,” which took Mancini’s famous comedy-cartoon theme back to its roots as a minor blues. Mr. Washington is an excellent high baritone in roughly the same orbit as Grady Tate and Jimmy Scott. But the charts at Dizzy’s (as on the recent album “Still Dancin’,” which features the singer alongside saxophonist Michael O’Neill and Mr. Locke) spotlight the instrumental quality of his voice rather than his ability to put across a lyric or tell a story. When he intoned “My huckleberry friend,” everyone focused on the chromatic descending notes rather than on the meaning of the words.

Throughout the show, Mr. Locke was his usual jubilant, high-energy self, even on the slower numbers. He could jam from here to judgment day without coming up for air, but was wise to concentrate on thematic projects, on which he can tether his formidable chops to a familiar melody and a bigger idea.

Likewise, Mr. Charles’s albums from the 1950s are prized by collectors for the exceptionally high quality of the writing and the stellar sidemen — not to mention his own excellent vibesmanship. At some point, some concert organization, such as Jazz at Lincoln Center or the 92nd Street Y, should do a special showcase of Mr. Charles’s more ambitious music for midsize ensembles, which would require a larger band and more rehearsal time than are feasible for most nightclubs.

Bringing Mr. Charles in at the head of a sextet of mostly younger players (the only other white-haired guy onstage was the veteran Vanguard trombonist John Mosca), centered around saxophonist Chris Byars, was a brilliant move for the Vanguard’s ever-astute Lorraine Gordon. Tuesday’s first show was one of the best sets of basic bebop I’ve heard at the Vanguard in a while, starting with the Charlie Parker anthem “Scrapple From the Apple.”

It wasn’t a question of the imminent octogenarian struggling to keep up with his young charges, including the rhythm section of Sacha Perry on piano, Ari Roland on bass, and Stefan Schatz on drums. Mr. Charles was spry and relentlessly vigorous throughout, inspiring the sidemen to do their best: When Mr. Roland, for instance, soloed on the second number, Mr. Charles’s A-B-A-B original “No More Nights,” he really slammed it, as if he were trying to out-Teddy Teddy.

The leader then called two more originals. The first, the basic-bop blues “Blues Without Woe,” was simplicity itself; the second, not so much. This was the “Baile Con Toro (Dances With Bulls),” a dedication to Charles Mingus, and a piece that alternated between passages that were tightly written and others that were almost randomly free-form. Some parts were deliberately disjointed, with fragments of melody sprouting from an asynchronous frontline, while others were smooth and even tranquil. This is the kind of probing, adventurous, yet accessible work that characterized Mr. Charles’s classic albums of 50 years ago.

The last tune of the evening was “Sans Souci,” by Mr. Charles’s onetime sideman, the saxophonist and composer Gigi Gryce, for which Mr. Byars switched to flute, and the sextet was augmented by his father, the oboist James Byars. As an aside, the elder Byars, from the New York City Ballet Orchestra, also plays on his son’s “Pictures at an Exhibition (of Himalayan Art),” which will receive its premiere at the Rubin Museum on April 18. More than the Spanish-titled piece that preceded it, this French title had a vaguely tropical feel; no one knew what to expect from a frontline of vibes, flute, trombone, and oboe.

According to his Web site, Mr. Charles spends most of his professional time operating a series of musical cruises on which, if I read correctly, he serves as both captain and bandleader. He hasn’t been heard in a New York venue in far too long, but now that he knows the way, let’s hope we hear him again soon — even if he has to come by sailboat.

wfriedwald@nysun.com