A saxophone and a piano are playing at the same time: Which of the two are you going to listen to? Me, too. The saxophone, or a horn in general, is always going to draw your attention first. In your basic jazz quartet — a sax plus piano, bass, and drums — the saxist is usually the leader and takes the lion’s share of the melody choruses and the solo improvisations.

That’s why I always admire pianists like Renee Rosnes, who are not afraid to put a horn player in front of their quartets: It means they welcome the potential competition and don’t worry that audiences might regard the player who is standing up as the “front man” and the musician sitting at the keyboard as a mere sideman.

It’s been a few years since I’ve heard Ms. Rosnes, who is constantly working in other people’s bands, leading her own group in a New York club. But that’s just what she’s doing this week at the Village Vanguard. Pianists frequently expand from piano trios to quartets-with-sax because using a horn gives them a larger canvas for their compositional ambitions. But it was clear during Ms. Rosnes’s opening set Tuesday night that she was not trying out a series of new originals to go on a future album — she just wanted to play some flat-out bebop in the hardest, fastest, and most exciting possible way. Woe unto the sax player (Steve Wilson), bassist (Peter Washington), or drummer (Bill Steward) who failed to keep up with her breathtaking pace.

Mr. Wilson is one of the contemporary masters of the alto saxophone, and is not resigned, as are some, to the idea that most of the jazz saxophone glory is reserved for tenor titans; he knows there’s a lot of experimentation and individuality up for grabs on the smaller E-flat alto. Mr. Wilson, like the late Jackie McLean, has a distinctive sound, slightly on the sharp side of the tonal palette. He also plays soprano sax, and his alto playing has something of a soprano tinge to it (as on the most recent recording I’ve heard of his, which is a new album by drummer Carl Allen and bassist Rodney Whittaker, “Get Ready”). On Tuesday, Mr. Wilson seemed content in his role as a sideperson, not trying to pull focus from the leader but making the most of his spots just the same with his commanding style.

Ms. Rosnes began with “Summer Night,” a Harry Warren song from a 1938 B-movie musical called “Porky at the Crocadero” that probably would have been forgotten had Miles Davis not introduced it to to the modern jazz repertory in 1963. She played it as a fast jazz waltz, phrasing the melody at first delicately, in lightly clipped staccato phrases. But as her improv continued, she grew louder and hotter and more agitated. You know Ms. Rosnes wants to get your attention when she has her drummer play a solo during the first number of the evening — that’s a custom generally reserved for the climax of a set.

From there, Ms. Rosnes dished out a compatible series of standards and somewhat lesser-known works by jazz and likeminded composers. Next was “Love for Sale,” on which Mr. Wilson played both of his saxes and Ms. Rosnes broke down the melody into its scalar components — it could have been titled “Love for Scale.” The other show tune was, coincidentally, the only other Cole Porter song associated with Miles Davis, “All of You,” on which Ms. Rosnes and Mr. Wilson phrased the melody in pointillistic unison.

The most ambitious work of the evening was Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Modhina,” which is not one of the bossa baron’s pop songs, but Ms. Rosnes’s quartet interpreted it as an intricate and complex chamber work with several distinct sections marked by tempo, each with a carefully controlled balance of form and improv, in-tempo and out-of-tempo passages. With little Brazilian rhythmic underpinning, it sounded more like something by John Lewis and the modern jazz quartet.

Ms. Rosnes also included two lesserknown works by two of her piano inspirations: “You Know I Care” by Duke Pearson (introduced by Joe Henderson on “Inner Urge”) and “Hogtown Blues,” an earthy and fundamental essay by fellow Canadian keyboardist Oscar Peterson. The Pearson tune was a lovely ballad that underscored the compatibility of the quartet: Ms. Rosnes began unaccompanied, and the others just slid in and out, almost imperceptively. (I’d like to hear Ms. Rosnes, or someone, put together a whole program of Duke Pearson tunes.)

The blues — about the only thing she hadn’t played up to that point — was right in the pocket, as musicians say. Ms. Rosnes and company latched on to a groove and rode it for all it was worth, with the leader getting funkier, louder, and more exciting as the choruses flew by. If you looked closely, you would have sworn you saw steam rising from the piano at the Vanguard.

***

Coincidentally, uptown at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the pianist Hank Jones had also begun his set with a fast jazz waltz: Toots Thielemans’s “Bluesette.” The piano sage is now 88 — a year for every key — and this was his first performance since undergoing a triple-bypass earlier this year.

He played as if he’d never gone away, tackling the keyboard with full force and the unceasing brilliance we’ve come to expect of him for nearly 70 years. One of Mr. Jones’s key strengths, like his disciple Bill Charlap, is the ability to play a melody almost exactly as written, yet make it sound completely personal. His treatment of “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” could have come right off the sheet music, except for how he made it ever so slightly louder and more dramatic at the beginning and end; the same held true for “In a Sentimental Mood,” which, contrary to the title, was reverent and prayerful, especially in the coda.

Even after generations of young pianists, including Ms. Rosnes, have grown up on Hank Jones, he never ceases to surprise: He was full of trick endings that came out of nowhere; he played “Soft Winds” not exactly like a blues and “What Am I Here For” not exactly in stride style, but with a pumping left hand just the same. Then he gave us something extra in spontaneously forming a trio with Bucky Pizzarelli (whom he introduced as “the greatest guitarist I’ve ever heard) and the bassist Jay Leonhart to play “Sweet Georgia Brown,” on which both melody players tried to top each other by laying down the most perfect ending. More than anyone playing today, Mr. Jones is amazingly modern, and impeccably classic at the same time.

wfriedwald@nysun.com