After years of trying to play the saxophone, one of the few things I retained is the sound of a low B flat: It’s hard to forget, because it’s the bottom note on the horn and it must be fingered in a unique way, giving it a quality like no other note. That particular note isn’t used very much in regular playing, although it’s generally included in a saxophonist’s practice ritual. On Tuesday night, at 9 p.m. sharp, I was sitting in front of the bar at the Village Vanguard when I heard a sequence of B flats to my immediate left. I turned, and there on the other side of the bar was a giant poster of Dexter Gordon, who seemed to be looking down and watching over as Joshua Redman finished his warm-up, about 15 seconds before taking to the stage with his trio.

In the spirit of Gordon, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Joe Lovano, Mr. Redman is the latest in a series of charismatic, larger-than-life tenor saxophonists to make the Vanguard his home. Returning to the venerable scene of his 1995 quartet album, “Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard,” Mr. Redman has brought with him the drummer Brian Blade (who appeared on the 1995 album) and added the bassist Reuben Rogers. Both the location and the trio format summon memories of Mr. Rollins, who, 51 years ago, recorded what is unlikely to be challenged as the greatest tenor trio record there, “A Night at the Village Vanguard.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Redman opened with a tune that most of us associate with Mr. Rollins (jazz-wise at least), “The Surrey With a Fringe on Top.” In introducing it, he observed that, back in the ’90s, he thought of his arrangement of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic as a “fuel-injected, turbo-charged surrey,” but that, given the current outlook on ecology, it was better to think of it as a gasoline-efficient hybrid vehicle. No matter — Mr. Redman’s 2008 ride in the surrey burns more energy than ever; it is definitely a high-octane, exhilarating ride, and it emits no noxious fumes or greenhouse gases.

“Surrey” typified the opening show in that Mr. Redman was in his best showman mode: He was constantly playful, exuberant, and at the top of his game. On every number, both the originals and the standards, he made a spectator sport of playing with everything he could: First he stated the melody, often as quickly as possible, then played with the tune, then played with the harmonies, then engaged in as much back-and-forth interplay with Messrs. Blade and Rogers as possible in a way that was reminiscent, as Mr. Redman suggested, of a basketball game being played on top of an auto race.

Mr. Redman followed “Surrey” with “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon),” another standard heard on his most recent album, “Back East” (Nonesuch). Here, too, the opening melody suggested the opening gun of some kind of race, be it with cars, horses, or Jesse Owens. Again, he started with the Brooks Bowman tune, but before long he had apparently moved on to playing with the very idea of the song — not just the notes and the chords but the sun and the moon themselves.

Here and on the mostly new originals that followed — “Ghost” (minor key, on soprano), “Identity Thief” (“You laugh now,” he mock-admonished the mostly college-age crowd, “but it could be tragic!”), and “Reuben’s Rounds” (a feature for the bassist, in the spirit of Mr. Rollins’s “Oleo” and “Tenor Madness”) — the leader continually broke the trio down into duos: himself with bass or drums, or Messrs. Rogers and Blade with each other. Mr. Redman was once classified as a neo-bopper, but he has certainly played all kinds of jazz; ironically, it’s been the use of a non-traditional format that seems to have inspired the most traditionally boppish playing of his recent career, as evidenced by “Reuben’s Rounds.”

Mr. Redman did play one ballad, but it was a hyperkinetic hybrid, “Angel Eyes,” with a long intro that seemed to combine the melodies of “I’m a Fool to Want You” and “Goodbye.” He clearly had Sinatra saloon songs on his mind, even though, as with everything else, he was constantly laying improvised melodies atop the standard ones, running all sorts of riffs and licks in and around the familiar song. After another bopper, “Two Track Mind,” the trio left the stage. But they were summoned back by the sold-out crowd and the Vanguard’s Lorraine Gordon (you don’t want to mess with her) for “Soul Dance,” a soprano-driven funky finale in a fast three. The minor melody was mostly a series of staccato notes, which Mr. Redman shot out of his soprano and then recoiled from; if you could somehow touch them, they would no doubt burn your fingers.

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Marian McPartland’s late show at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola on Wednesday was touching in a different way: This was the master pianist’s 90th birthday, and her long-delayed retirement is obviously imminent. She now introduces nearly every set with what amounts to an advance apology: “This performance is brought to you by the arthritis foundation,” and while she sportingly makes a joke of it, it’s clearly frustrating to her that she has lost the dexterity that was hers as a younger woman. Yet though the celebration featured two trumpeters (Jeremy Pelt and Wynton Marsalis, the latter playing beautifully on “All the Things You Are”), two singers (Jeanie Bryson and Karrin Allyson), and the violinist Regina Carter, the evening clearly belonged to Ms. McPartland and two guest pianists who came to pay tribute.

Both Bill Charlap and Kenny Barron offered solo features that paid more than lip service to the Great Lady of the piano and demonstrated what they had learned from her, namely luminous chords, driving rhythms, and melodies that were at once stately and swinging. Mr. Charlap’s mini-set was all about jazz royalty: He offered Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady,” an appropriate dedication, with Ducal chromaticisms; “April in Paris,” in a take on the famous Count Basie arrangement, and “Stranger in a Dream,” by the Queen Mum of Jazz Herself. Mr. Barron’s “Memories of You” was, as the title indicated, driven by a tribute to Ms. McPartland, but also to the entire history of jazz piano, with nods to Art Tatum and Earl Hines.

Even at 90, Ms. McPartland was not to be outdone. She began with an antique Dixieland opus associated with her late husband, the traditional jazz trumpeter Jimmy McPartland, “Royal Garden Blues,” as if she were consigning herself to the realm of ancient history. But within a few choruses, she had thoroughly modernized it and even bopped it up. She then did the late Alec Wilder the great service of playing his mood piece “Blackberry Winter” as a solo, with just the tune and not the dismal, downer lyric. Her final number, “I’ll Remember April,” was a beautiful trio piece, and Ms. McPartland almost seemed to have full command of her fingers again, talking the tune through some Tristano-like abstractions.

That should have been the last number, and it would have been a fitting closer to a bloody marvelous career, but a few of the celebrants insisted on jamming on a blues with her, which was anticlimactic to say the least. In my future revisionist memories of this night, “April” will be the last number Marian McPartland played in public. I’ll remember April, and I’ll smile.

wfriedwald@nysun.com