Benny Carter’s contribution to jazz is inestimable. Except for the bit about taking drugs and dying young, the alto saxophonist lived every part of the jazz experience. He was one of the all-time masters of his instrument — not to mention one of the first saxophone virtuosos in jazz — and he played half a dozen other instruments brilliantly as well. He was a marvelous arranger and that rare jazz composer of his generation whose works continue to be played into the modern era. He spent years on the road, and was one of the first black musicians to go international; he later spent decades toiling in the film and recording studios, where he also opened up new doors for jazz musicians of every color.

But he was defined by the music. When Carter put together an album — writing most of the tunes and all of the charts, and handpicking the soloists to play them — the results were inevitably brilliant. Give me the 1961 “Further Definitions” on my iPod and I will happily relocate to the desert island of your choice.

Those of us who knew Benny were certain that he would live to play and write new music in his 100th year; that he died four years short of that in 2003 is one of the only disappointments of his career. We can hardly complain, because he never stopped creating, and was active right to the end. Now, to mark his centennial, two new albums have been issued (and other events are being planned for the fall) to give listeners the highly comforting feeling that Benny Carter is still making music.

Fittingly, of the two new releases, one features Carter mostly as a player and the other mostly as a composer. “Just Friends,” is a previously unissued live performance from 1994, co-starring the tenor saxophonist Mel Martin; “The Benny Carter Centennial Project” is a compendium of Carter compositions newly recorded for the occasion.

The former, recorded at Yoshi’s at San Francisco, offers a generous sampling of Carter’s improvisations, withthetwosaxesstretching out luxuriously on all of six tunes, including two Carter compositions. Carter was, above all, a brilliant saxophonist, with a tone like no other, sweet and pungent, with a distinct vibrato and an unmistakable way of bending the edges of a note to give them a more vocalized sound. His solos, as becomes especially clear on the standards “Secret Love” and “Just Friends,” flow so logically from one point to the next that they’re almost the musical equivalent of a crossword puzzle. His partner in this enterprise, the Californiabased Mr. Martin (who demonstrated his allegiance to Benny with an album of Carter compositions 10 years ago), contributes his most sterling moment with an appropriately eloquent flute solo on one of Carter’s last great tunes, “People Time,” a stunning ballad that gave Stan Getz one of his best late-career moments.

The “Centennial Project” is the work of Ed Berger, of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, who is the son of Carter’s friend and biographer, Morroe Berger. It primarily features musicians who worked with Carter through the years, from the veteran big band trumpeter Joe Wilder to bop star Phil Woods (who helped make “Further Definitions” a classic), to a roster of contemporary swing-oriented soloists in their 40s and 50s. Amazingly, although the players span a range of generations, instruments, and styles, everything here sounds so much like Carter’s music that it’s easy to picture him playing on every track.

The disc opens with a pair of outstanding trumpeters, Warren Vaché and Randy Sandke, taking the title of Carter’s “I’m in the Mood for Swing” rather literally in a two-trumpet team-up. Later, each gets a solo, with Mr. Sandke playing especially warmly on the lesser-known ballad “Again and Again.” Mr. Vache gets the more exotic “Key Largo,” which he delivers with both a mute and characteristic grace while drummer Steve Little imbues the piece with a sultry feel. A few tracks later, Carter’s 85-year-old colleague, Joe Wilder, plays “The Blessing” with both a flair and a restraint that are almost classical.

Mr. Woods plays two duets with the pianist John Coates, while Bill Kirchner updates the swing era theme “Melancholy Lullaby” on soprano saxophone. Tenorist Loren Schoenberg tackles a medley of two lesser-known Carter tunes, “Angeline” and “Where the Warm Winds Blow,” that sound especially modern (and not just for a composer born at the turn of the last century). Both the playing and the tunes sound like they could be modal waltzes by Wayne Shorter, and though Messrs. Woods, Kirchner, and Schoenberg sound nothing like one another, they all sound a little bit like Carter when playing his music.

In Carter’s legacy, however, solo saxophones are hardly the whole point. Carter was a pioneer of the jazz sax on at least two levels — both as one of the first soloists and as one of the first and greatest writers for the saxophone section (behind only Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn).

“I’m Coming Virginia,” for four saxes and rhythm, is an elaboration on an arrangement that Carter recorded in Paris in 1938 with a largely French band (finding room for a solo by guitarist Django Reinhardt). It’s classically Carterian in the smoothness of the blend and in the agility in which he arranged for the two altos and two tenors to play melodic variations that sound like a single monster horn — Carter x 4.

The other saxophone ensemble work, a further variation on a prehistoric standard, “All of Me,” is quite different: Carter began by adding a fifth sax, a baritone, which begins the piece, rather than having the five saxes play in a seamless blend. At first they’re all over the place and each other, yet Carter was controlled even at his most chaotic, and when the quintet all comes together, the blend is glorious.

Mr. Berger would be the last to trumpet the “Project” as a definitive work; rather he seems to have deliberately left off many of Carter’s most famous pieces (i.e., “When Lights Are Low,” which has been recorded hundreds of times, and “People Time”) in favor of neglected works. The CD closes with Carter’s last recording, a piano solo on an apparently new tune titled “All About You,” recorded in 2001 when the composer was 94. Now released for the first time, it is here preceded by a new guitar solo from Russell Malone (who phrases it somewhat like Eddie Lang’s 1927 waltz “April Kisses”). In both statements, the piece is beautiful, sweet, and simple — a perfect coda for the career of an understated jazz giant.

wfriedwald@nysun.com