All-star concerts, in which famous horn and rhythm players get together and jam on familiar favorites, can be wonderful things. So too, however, is a regularly working band, in which musicians, in Duke Ellington’s phrase, get to know each other’s “pokerplaying habits.” All-star shows are a boon for the copyright holders of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Take the A-Train,” but working bands are where future jazz standards are nurtured and developed.

Two of the most exciting working bands around today are appearing at major New York clubs this week, and they both have new albums. The tenor saxophonist John Tchicai and his Quintet (“Good Night Stories,” Boxholder) are at Birdland, and drummer Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts (“The Scenic Route,” Palmetto) is at Jazz Standard. It’s possible to see the music of both groups in terms of their fluid relationships between the clearly defined traditions of modern jazz and the open-ended experimental mode of the avant-garde. Yet at the same time, both bands are clearly marked by their insistence on developing a repertory of memorable tunes. I heard them both on Wednesday, catching Mr. Wilson at 7:30 and then cabbing it up to Birdland just before 9.

John Tchicai is a lanky, 70-year-old Dane of Congolese descent, well known in jazz as one of the first Europeans to embrace the New Thing of the early 1960s and prove himself in the fiery cauldron of New York’s free-jazz scene. He is one of the only musicians to record with both style-setting “Johns” of the era — John Coltrane (on the 1965 “Ascension”) and John Lennon (on “The Natural Circus,” Yoko Ono’s experimental big-band project of 1969).

The music that Mr. Tchicai is making with his current project, however, sounds little like the explosive music of that tempestuous era. This is undeniably postmodern jazz, in that it does not rely on a foundation of familiar chord changes or either the melodies or harmonies of standard songs. Yet it’s also free from the anger, hostility, and turbulence of the ’60s. On the album (10 tracks on a doubledisc set recorded live in 2003), Mr. Tchicai interacts with fellow multireed player Charlie Kohlhase, who plays principally baritone saxophone, and guitarist Garrison Fewell in a trio format, in which all three members ease between soloing and accompanying one another.

At Birdland, they decided to add two New York-based players as a rhythm section: the bassist Cecil McBee and the drummer Billy Hart. I enjoy hearing the group both ways; with bass and drums, they lose some of their free-floating fluidity, but their work as composers becomes more sharply defined. Two melodies, in particular, suggested the Caribbean: one had something like a reggae-style beat, while the other, titled “Start to Finish,” was clearly inspired by Sonny Rollins’s calypsos. Both Mr. Tchicai and Mr. Kohlhase played tenors, and Mr. Fewell, unlike most guitarists in postmodern contexts, played primarily single notes.

On the whole, each piece was short enough to not wear out its welcome. On Mr. Fewell’s “Dark Matter,” Mr. Kohlhase stayed on tenor while Mr. Tchicai switched to bass clarinet, and they played insinuatingly sinewy melodies. They also played one tune in waltz tempo, on which the leader sang a surreal lyric to a clear-cut melody that sounded so traditional it could have been based on the changes to “I Got Rhythm.”

If Mr. Tchicai’s quintet plays postmodern music that doesn’t so much look backward as sideways to accessible melodies, Mr. Wilson’s Arts & Crafts is a bop-centric quartet that takes what it likes from both soul jazz and the avant-garde. The title track on “The Scenic Route,” for instance, is a ’60s-style boogaloo laid down by Gary Versace on hammond organ, over which trumpeter Terrell Stafford plays an exaggeratedly-staccato melody with plunger mute, to almost comic effect. They open with this on the album, but in person they began with Thelonious Monk’s “We See,” one of the composer’s most buoyant tunes. During the next hour, the quartet fashioned optimistically bouncy music out of both an early free jazz piece by Ornette Coleman (1959’s “Rejoicing”) and a fusion tune by Pat Metheny (“The Bat”). Mr. Wilson also gave bassist Dennis Irwin a chance to show what he could do on clarinet, which turned out to be a Slavic-sounding duet with Mr. Versace on accordion. After that, a trio of clarinet, trumpet, and drums played a Cuban parade samba that could have just as easily come from Martinique or New Orleans.

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As a performer, Ben Vereen, who has just begun a two-week run at Feinstein’s, is in a very unusual place. He became a star thanks to three very untraditional shows: “Hair,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and “Pippin,” all of which helped introduce the sound of contemporary youth-oriented pop to Broadway.

Yet Mr. Vereen was not a rockand-roller but an enormously appealing, old-school style song-anddance man, whom one would love to see in a show by Gershwin, Ellington, or Arlen. He has a marvelously warm voice, great chops, and a charisma (reminiscent of the late Sam Cooke) that comes through even when his remarkable dancing is confined to the postagestamp style stage at the Regency.

Mr. Vereen’s show, however, is all over the place: He begins by doing what most Broadway stars in cabaret do: a retrospective of his shows and signature songs. Then he drifts into long medleys saluting Frank Sinatra and then Sammy Davis Jr. (both of whom, he rightfully states, deserve to be honored during Black History Month).

Mr. Vereen’s arrangements are inconsistent, ranging from the sumptuous to the cheesy (as in a “Superstar” medley) and he is obviously unaccustomed to the intimate space of cabaret, because he directs a lot of grandiose gestures toward balconies that don’t exist. Yet when he is on, Mr. Vereen is incredibly on, never more so than in two amazing duets — “My Funny Valentine,” with the bassist Mike Boone, and an especially awesome “Misty,” accompanied only by the mallets of his talented drummer.

The larger context of the show needs polishing, but Mr. Vereen is well worth seeing — and hearing — under any circumstance. “What do I know,” he says near the end, “I’m just a legendary star!”

wfriedwald@nysun.com