The District of Columbia is a land of institutions, so it makes sense that the city’s annual jazz eulogise is 1 that emphasizes the music’s history and presents the art form at its most coherent & formalist. The event—now billed as the DC Jazz Festival, formerly the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival—began on Jun 1 and continues by Sunday, and works as both a community-building practice and a glossier display for traditional jazz virtues. Few event s at the legal holiday mingle with the past in a more candescent way than the annual NEA Jazz Masters concert, which on Thursday night was to pay reverence to saxophonist James Moody. It did this, sort of, often by default.

The 85-year-old NEA Commander, suggested legal holiday owner Charles Fishman, had not long ago undergone surgery & was advocated by his doctors not to journeys. But he was listening via a simulcast, & what Moody listened had less to do with him and more to do with his employer and co-operator of half a century, Dizzy Gillespie, & the contemporary jazz Diz innovated.

There were orderly suits, jive standards, ballads, pale wail, purposeful mid-solo quotations, Dizzy’s Afro-Cuban amalgams, a brief but potent vocal-jazz member, traded fours & energetic solos in rounds. Programs like this take a violence from serious-minded fanatics, but they can help their purposes : To the uninitiated they supply a undisturbed yet approachable overview of what the music has stood for, and if you come to pass to pursue jazz closely, in every its perfectionist, unyielding sonic & fanciful advance, they can be relieving. (It says a lot bout’ the forbidding class of jazz’s slicing corner when bebop is mitigating. )

Of course, the program is just as great as it is crew, and that positively wasn’t a complaint here. As could be expected, most of the underlined Moody associates worked with him via the immeasurable companionship surrounding Dizzy—whether they achieved in the trumpeter’s rope, in 1 of his post-mortem repertory ensembles (such as the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars, billed here ), or both. Cyrus Chestnut on piano demonstrated bop’s shatterproof connection to the blues; Roy Hargrove on trumpet and flugelhorn supported star power & acted as a somewhat diffident leader; bassist John Lee built his fretless electric instrument sound like an acoustic one; & drummer Willie Jones III anchored the ensemble with unaffected pitch. Special guest Paquito D’Rivera accepted Moody’s DC Jazz Festival Lifetime Achievement Award with grace, blew impeccably toned alto & clarinet, & punctuated the lengthy show’s differently dry presentation with his everyday order of well-timed cracks. (It was D’Rivera who compensated correct loyalty to the wit, warmth & hammy glamour Dizzy & Moody built onstage; though, to his credit, Hargrove inspired some chuckles with his scatting at show’s conclusion. )

Israeli guitarist Yotam Silberstein, a Moody discovery, was a focal point throughout and consistently constructed the most of his plenty solo time. There was something refreshingly vintage in general his playing—his tinge serene & round, his phrasing steeped in the blues & consistently at the help of a account. Notwithstanding some finger-tapping, which, on his hollowbody, didn’t proportion to much of anything, he worked in a mid-century style that has been sadly lost because the appearance of fusion & the change of postbop technicians like Kurt Rosenwinkel.

The set list would have sufficed for an undergrad-level listening examination : “Groovin’ High,” with Yotam and Hargrove as the frontline, was lissome and excellent, as was “Birk’s Works,” with Hargrove & D’Rivera at the helm. “’Round Midnight” evoked Gillespie but more Miles Davis &, unavoidably, the tune’s composer, Thelonious Monk.

There was perhaps as a lot of Monk as there was Moody. One of two duets featuring violinist Regina Carter and pianist Kenny Barron was a sterling take on “Misterioso,” where Carter kept time with balletic pizzicato. (The other duet, “Georgia on My Mind,” showcased Carter’s excellent pointing, emotional depth and spot-on intonation. ) During the show’s first half, the core tiny group simmered on “Rhythm-A-Ning” while the tap-dancing Manzari brothers, now performing at the Lincoln Theatre in Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, spun and clattered.

Vocalist Roberta Gambarini assimilated the rope to see the dusk out, & offering an abiding “You Don’t Know What Love Is” as well as—you guessed it—“Moody’s Mood for Love.” Though she read the lyrics, Gambarini’s deliberate smoothness and athletic approach with dialect made the offering worthwhile. But one couldn’t aid though imagine what makeshift fun would have ensued had the man of the hour been in the house.