Jimmy McPartland (1907–91) was a top-drawer cornetist and a proud representative of the Chicago school of classic jazz. He was often tagged with the “Dixieland” label — though “Bixieland,” which referred to his musical hero, Bix Beiderbecke, and “Nicksiland,” referring to the club Nick’s in Greenwich Village where McPartland frequently played with guitarist-bandleader Eddie Condon, applied equally well.

There were at least two sides to McPartland’s musical nature: He was a tough, aggressive player who specialized in the blues and basics, favoring feeling over clean technique. But he also remained the first and most famous disciple of Beiderbecke, the short-lived jazz age icon who brought a new sensitivity and an almost classical sensibility to the music.

On Tuesday night, McPartland’s centennial was celebrated during the opening concert of the 2007 JVC Jazz Festival by an all-star band led by the cornetist’s widow and musical partner, the pianist Marian McPartland. Indeed, the mere fact that Jimmy McPartland worked with his wife, who was 11 years his junior and a much more modern player with a deep, impressionistically influenced harmonic palette, shows that he had a forward-leaning side to complement his hard-driving attack.

In fact, Ms. McPartland and her seven sidemen — trumpeter Warren Vache, clarinetist Joe Muranyi, trombonist Bobby Pring, guitarist Howard Alden, bassist Bill Crow, drummer Eddie Locke, and Ken Peplowski on clarinet and tenor sax (all of whom worked with Jimmy at one point) — did an admirable job of capturing both aspects of McPartland’s music.

Surprisingly for a traditional jazz-oriented show, the two highlights were sublimely lyrical moments, both of which were both inspired by Beiderbecke. Both were also tunes with the word “blues” in the title but were not really the blues. Ms. McPartland opened with Beiderbecke’s most celebrated performance, “Singin’ the Blues,” built around snippets from the solos by Beiderbecke and saxist Frank Trumbauer. In the second half, Ms. McPartland accompanied Mr. Alden on a sumptuous duet of “Davenport Blues,” which pivots on a memorable descending phrase. In both, Ms. McPartland’s harmonies were lushly Billy Strayhorn-like, and on “Davenport,” Mr. Alden also wittily quoted the famous “Singin’ the Blues” solo.

The spirit of Beiderbecke also permeated the more extroverted “Louisiana,” as well as an unnamed original by Ms. McPartland that she said was inspired by a phrase her husband frequently used in his practice sessions (which, she said, “he didn’t do very often”). In Ms. McPartland’s signature style, it was a simple melody with dark lavish chords, a kind of jazz gothic. Throughout the evening, the frontline was sparked by the two younger players, Messrs. Vache and Peplowski, with the two veterans, Messrs. Pring and Muranyi, also holding their own.

Both halves of the concert were balanced between traditional jam session features, like “I Found a New Baby,” “China Boy,” “Rose Room,” and “Avalon” (the announced closer), and more intimate solo features. Mr. Muranyi sang and played Hoagy Carmichael’s “New Orleans” with a wooden, earthy tone, and Mr. Pring took the melody on both “Basin Street Blues,” leading to a modernsounding chorus of simultaneous improvisation by Messrs. Vache and Peplowski in tandem, and “These Foolish Things,” which Ms.. McPartland dressed up in her usual rhapturous chords. Mr. Peplowski, switching to clarinet, played Rodgers and Hart’s “The Blue Room” in a very baroque, boppish duet with Mr. Alden’s guitar; the two looped and swirled around each other as if to the beat of an imaginary bass and drums.

At the end of the show, Mr. Vache called a spontaneous encore of “Tin Roof Blues,” which he used to send off the band. Mr. Vache was, for the most part, serving as musical director for the evening, but he neglected to save a featured spot for himself. Still, he may have provided the most memorable moment of the evening when, in the middle of “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” he turned his cornet away from his mic and pointed it squarely at Ms. McPartland. I couldn’t quite hear what Mr. Vache played, but it sounded like a quote from “The Night Is Young (And You’re So Beautiful).” He was right, on both counts.

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In jazz concerts celebrating a famous deceased musician, it’s something of a tradition for the participants to announce that they will play the music of the honoree without conspicuously imitating him or her. No such declaration was uttered at the commencement of Wednesday’s “We Remember Ruby” at the Kaye Playhouse — because the cornetist Ruby Braff (1927–2003) was beyond inimitable. Indeed, his style was so unique that even he, at the end of his life, had difficulty sounding like himself and maintaining his own high standard.

Still, the two excellent trumpeters who played in Braff’s honor, Jon-Erik Kellso and Warren Vache, had both obviously learned a lot from Braff. Neither dared to try and capture Braff’s signature, all-but-patented “purring” sound, but they both knew what so many younger trumpeters don’t know: that the instrument can be used for more than boppish blasting and roofraising; there is a virtually limitless range of dynamic possibilities, of louds and softs, of spaces and silences, of fasts and slows, even within a single phrase. All of this is Braff’s legacy, and he developed it more acutely than almost any brassman in jazz, even with his diminished lung capacity.

I expected Wednesday’s show to be like Tuesday’s, a series of jam numbers with occasional solo features; instead, it began with the full ensemble, led by George Wein (who first worked with Ruby in Boston 60 years ago), but then the bulk of the evening was given over to a succession of smaller combos. Both Messrs. Vache and Kellso recreated one of Braff’s brilliant chamber units, with Mr. Vache shining in a quartet with two guitars (Mr. Alden and Bostonian Jon Wheatley) on Gershwin’s “Liza,” which had a floating quality, as if to illustrate clouds rolling away and wherein the Braff purr was reincarnated as a tiger growl. Mr. Kellso began the second half by rendering Mary Lou Williams’s “Lonely Moments” in a highly vocalized tone.

In other segments, the tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton fronted a quartet with pianist Norman Simmons in a marvelous triumvirate of Billie Holiday songs. The singerpianist Daryl Sherman illustrated Braff’s passion for great songs (not to mention Alice Faye) with a rhythmically charged “You’re Laughing at Me.” Dick Hyman, who recorded many albums of duets with Braff, offered a solo piano interlude in which he played Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Bali Hai” as if it were Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy” and then essayed Monk’s “Misterioso” as if it were a more traditional 12-bar blues.

The full ensemble did not reconvene until the very end, concluding with Berlin’s “The Song Is Ended (But the Melody Lingers On).” This was taken in a romping tempo rather than as a ballad, but was poignantly bittersweet just the same, reminding us of how much we lost when Ruby Braff left us.

wfriedwald@nysun.com