Jazz is essentially a music of tension and release. You listen to the opening “head” and wonder exactly what the soloist is going to play when he starts to improvise, then how he’s going to find his way back to the tune. You wonder the same thing about how the group is going to resolve the piece and get back to the tonic chord.

Wayne Shorter’s music, as he showed in a thrilling recital Friday at Carnegie Hall as part of the JVC Jazz Festival, is about tension of a different kind: that between the audience and the artist. The crowd seemed to want the saxophonist and composer to be the Wayne Shorter of 40 years ago. Mr. Shorter, however, wants something less easily defined. The crowd wanted him to step forward and claim his legacy as a jazz headliner; he wanted to remain merely one element in his own aural soundscapes.

Mr. Shorter has a great rhythm section: Danilo Perez on piano, John Patitucci on bass, and the outstanding Brian Blade on drums. But rather than be a star tenor player accompanied by a rhythm section (in the manner of, say, Sonny Rollins), Mr. Shorter thinks of himself as merely one member of the quartet – perhaps not even the most important one. To him, his own solos are considerably less important than his compositions.

Mr. Shorter refuses to condescend to any kind of stagecraft or showmanship, such as announcing band members, introducing song titles, or even clearly separating one selection from another. Where his longtime boss, Miles Davis, did this out of a kind of anti-showmanship, Mr. Shorter seems so wrapped up in the music that he can’t afford to spend any time communicating to the crowd, except through the music.

Mr. Shorter’s just-released album, “Beyond the Sound Barrier” (Verve 000451802), recorded at live appearances over three years and on three continents, functions as a rough map to what he’s putting down in concert these days. Mr. Shorter’s insistence on running one tune into another doesn’t work particularly well on a CD, and some of the selections by necessity had to have board fades imposed on them. But this is the most satisfying project Mr. Shorter has released in years.

The key to the whole works is “Smilin’ Through,” one of two songs on the album and in Mr. Shorter’s current repertoire that isn’t his own original (the other is Felix Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song”). Mr. Shorter, according to Michelle Mercer’s fine new biography “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter,” is an unabashed popculture buff, and here he makes his eclectic interests work for him. I like to think he’s using the unsung lyrics topic of homecoming as a metaphor for his recent return, after decades of experimentation and electronics, back to the acoustic jazz that made us love him to begin with.

The song was written by one Arthur Penn in 1919, at the same time that a hit play of that title premiered on Broadway. The play was filmed three times, last in 1941, and though the show and the song had no direct connection, they both were extremely sentimental tearjerkers. “Smilin’ Through” was revived at the end of World War II by Judy Garland as a heart-tugging song of homecoming. As in the more famous “My Blue Heaven,” when shadows fall and evening is nigh, the protagonist wends his way home and sees the eyes of his beloved smiling through back at him.

This song is the opener and the centerpiece of the CD. Playing soprano, Mr. Shorter renders the unconventional melody straight and beautifully, and then makes it more funky and boppish. Although I prefer the treatment on the album, “Smilin’ Through” was very effective at Friday’s concert. Mr. Shorter placed it at the end of his long opening segment, after “Zero Gravity” and “Wings of Song.” But hide it though he may, the beautiful old melody came smiling through.

The same is true of Mr. Shorter’s playing, try as he may to bury his light under the bushel of the band and play up the contrast between his own nature and the extroverted, outgoing style of the other three members (especially the exuberant Mr. Blade), Mr. Shorter can’t help but be the group’s dominant voice. He’s the one we can’t take our eyes and ears off, even when he tries to disappear.

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From a legendary saxophonist-bandleader-composer who is a bit reluctant to play the starring role with his own quartet, we switched to a band led by a bassist – traditionally a supporting role – who has no compunction about grabbing the spotlight. The Dave Holland Quintet played an outstanding set following Mr. Shorter on Friday at Carnegie. Mr. Banks and Robin Eubanks (trombone), Steve Wilson (vibes), Nate Smith (drums), and the remarkable Chris Potter (tenor and soprano saxophones) were, if anything, even more together than when I heard them at Birdland a few months ago.

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The other remarkable slice of saxophonics heard this weekend was at the Vision Festival on Thursday. The first band was a quartet of venerable Chicagoans, featuring the Art Ensemble’s multi-reedist Joseph Jarman, Tatsu Aoki on bass, and Alvin Fielder on drums – all in support of the man of the hour, tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, who for most of his 76 years has been a standard-bearer of postmodern jazz in the Windy City.

Mr. Anderson opened with a great, sweeping solo cadenza that beautifully filled the Vision performance space at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, a former synagogue. As always, Mr. Jarman had christened the first night of the festival with his “opening invocation,” but here, on the third night, Mr. Anderson took charge with a beautiful invocation of his own. His tenor statement had all the passion and power of a prayer.

Like Mr. Shorter, his set was built around a long piece, which was apparently one number but could have easily been several themes stitched together. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Jarman switched off roles of soloist and accompanist, even as Mr. Jarman alternated between the small alto saxophone and the big alto flute. The work ended, quixotically, with what in more conventional jazz would have clearly been a “head” statement, the two saxes playing a pre-written melody together in harmony. In between, Mr. Anderson used free jazz and its attendant effects very sparingly, as if they were a spice rather than the main dish.

It was a beautiful, 25-minute performance. My only disappointment was that this one long number turned out to be the whole set by this quartet, and the only thing that Mr. Anderson and Mr. Jarman played together.