Solal — A French noun and adjective meaning brilliant, ceaselessly inventive, daring, and provocative; guaranteed to keep an audience on the edge of its collective seat; the ability to take the most familiar jazz standards and ingeniously reconstruct them into something wholly original; a propensity for taking the most abstract fragments and shards of melody and making them seem, by turns, either footpattingly swinging or heart-movingly lyrical.

The definition above comes from my jazz fan’s Francais–Anglais dictionaire (and if it doesn’t, it certainly should). The dictionary also mentions that the word is taken from the name of one of the great living pianists, the Algerianborn Frenchman Martial Solal, who is celebrating his 80th birthday this week with six nights of solo recitals at the Village Vanguard.

It was appropriate that Mr. Solal chose “Here’s That Rainy Day” as his third number: As 9 p.m. approached during his opening set on Tuesday, the Vanguard was packed to the walls with clods like myself, who, in our unrestrained zeal to catch Mr. Solal in a rare New York appearance (his last such show occurred on the week of September 11, 2001) neglected to bring our Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The room was so full that no one apart from Mr. Solal himself and a few slim waitresses could even move.

No, it wasn’t the most comfortable 75 minutes I’ve ever spent at the Vanguard, but it was one of the most musiwcally rewarding. Mr. Solal treated us to a dozen ur-jazz standards, all of which he made seem completely brand new. His playing references every piano style ever invented in jazz (and a few that weren’t), from the stride of Fats Waller to the Harlem sophistication of Duke Ellington to the breathless adventure of Art Tatum to the impish left-handed humor of Erroll Garner — sometimes all at once. Like Garner, he’ll often begin in left field before letting us in on the melody, and then, just when we’ve found our bearings, he’ll veer off in another direction. Yet he never stops driving or pushing forward; even when he relinquishes the tune and minimizes the rhythm, there’s no mistaking that he’s still taking us someplace, even if most of the familiar guideposts aren’t there.

Mr. Solal also alternates between transparent lines, where there’s nothing visible but the most essential notes of the tune, and dense harmonic clusters laid atop the melodic skeleton. When he lets you recognize the tune, it reminds me of a Disney cartoon of a little train chugging along on a track. Pow! There’s an upset, and now the train has been broken down into a dozen individual cars, each proceeding along a track of its own. Frantic as it sounds, somehow the eye and ear have no problem following all of the cars by themselves, even before they all reunite to make the whole train.

On “Rainy Day,” Monsieur Solal danced around the tune as though he were darting between the raindrops falling outside, and concluded with a tag from “Lohengrin” (he said it was a dedication to Madame Solal). He then apologized for not being fully warmed up and, taking him at his word, his playing did grow increasingly sharp and dynamic as the set continued. In “Prelude to a Kiss,” he threw in what at first seemed like an irreverent quote from “Satin Doll,” but then quickly began alternating between the two tunes, not so much in a medley in which A becomes B, but as if he had spontaneously collaged them into yet a third tune. Even when he gives you more of the traditional melody, he doesn’t let you take anything for granted.

Mr. Solal rendered “Tea for Two” with a pumping bass line à la Thelonious Monk, and then sailed into the most optimistic, majorkey treatment of Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” I’ve ever heard, throwing in a snatch of “Misterioso” at the coda. He treated “I Can’t Get Started” with abstract elegance, and surprised us all with the world’s slowest, most romantic “Cherokee.” He delivered “Body and Soul” with thick, spikey rhythms, and, conversely, boiled “Lover Man” to the absolute minimum number of notes necessary to get the idea across.

A great quality of some of the best musicians is that you can hear the whole history of the music in their playing, and while that’s certainly true of Martial Solal, what’s even more remarkable is that you can get a sense of the future of the jazz piano as well, and it’s hard to imagine a brighter one.

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Undoubtedly, Mr. Solal also played “Round Midnight” on Wednesday to commemorate what would have been the 90th birthday of composer Thelonious Monk. For most of his career, Monk was regarded as a fringe outsider — if not a pariah — by the musical establishment. But two presentations on the musician this week on city campuses further illustrate how central the iconoclastic pianist and composer has become to the history of jazz.

First, at CUNY, the precocious 32-year-old piano star Jason Moran engaged in a dialogue with Sun columnist Gary Giddins. In Mr. Moran’s experience, Monk is the single most essential figure in all of jazz piano: He talked about how he learned Monk’s music first, then traveled backward through it to discover Monk’s influences (like James P. Johnson and Duke Ellington),and then forward, to compare Monk’s music with such progenies as McCoy Tyner and Randy Weston. Mr. Moran also discussed his current project, planned as a 90th birthday celebration, a rather radical re-conceptualization of Monk’s celebrated 1959 big band concert at Town Hall.

Then at the New School, the trumpeter Jimmy Owens put together what was advertised as a “traditional” presentation of Monk’s music, but actually offered more breaks with tradition. First, there was the ensemble of brass (with Mr. Owens and the trombonist Slide Hampton, who quoted “Thelonious” in the middle of “Rhythm-a-Ning”) and rhythm (the redoubtable veteran Junior Mance on piano, bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Eric McPherson). I expected just a jam session on Thelonious classics; instead, Mr. Owens offered thoughtful new arrangements on some lesser-known Monk ballads, in which he, unusually, used trombone and flugelhorn for their mellow qualities on “Pannonica” and “Let’s Cool One.” The latter was, for the first time that I know of, treated as a waltz, in the manner of Monk’s “Ugly Beauty.”

Mr. Mance, who turned 79 that same day, took honors with a trio treatment of “Round Midnight” and in general stole the show whenever he had the chance to play the blues, as on “Well You Needn’t” and “Brilliant Corners.” For a finale, a second trumpeter, Cecil Bridgewater, joined the quintet and made the ensemble even more brassy and bluesy. I guess the lesson to be learned is that there’s no such thing as a “conventional” presentation of Monk’s music. Happy Birthday, Thelonious, wherever you are.

wfriedwald@nysun.com