These musicians are well-schooled

The Grammy Salute to Jazz at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel Tuesday night lost some of its luster when one of the principal honorees, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, canceled his appearance. His nephew, Clifton Anderson, accepted the award on Rollins’ behalf, explaining that his uncle had back strain from a minor car accident and decided not to make the five-hour plane flight from his New York home.

Although Rollins performs in the Southland every year or two, the invited audience of music-world heavy hitters was clearly disappointed over the missed opportunity for up close and personal contact with one of jazz’s living legends.

Fortunately, the other honoree, pianist McCoy Tyner, was present to accept his award from Recording Academy President Neil Portnow. But Tyner elected to offer his thanks from the keyboard of his instrument, reducing the evening’s verbal interaction with the Salute to Jazz honorees from a possible two to zero.

That’s not to say that Tyner’s playing lacked powers of communication. His lush, rhapsodic, solo rendering of “For All We Know” was a definitive display of the unique improvisational dialect he has been developing for nearly five decades. The only thing missing was more of the same in Tyner’s far too brief set.

On hand with his usual aplomb to take up any of the slack was Bill Cosby -- at his best, as usual -- before the kind of musically literate audience that can pick up on the subtleties of his jazz-oriented raps. In rare form, he unreeled one witty tale after another, climaxing with a visual impression of the differences in body language between a classical and a jazz pianist. And when he returned at the end to finish the show, neither he nor the audience seemed particularly willing to have it come to a close.

The other highlights of the program were all provided by the marvelous music of the Gibson/Baldwin Grammy jazz ensembles. Assembled just a few days earlier, the ensembles’ high school singers and instrumentalists, chosen from 26 cities and 14 states, were quickly molded into impressive groups -- a jazz choir, a jazz combo and a jazz big band -- by the Manhattan School of Music’s Justin DiCioccio and USC’s Ron McCurdy.

The solo work of the young players surely made their elders proud, especially in the dynamic performances of the combo’s alto saxophonist, Grace Kelly, and the big band’s two tenor saxophonists, Adam Larson and Chad Lefkowitz-Brown. And the big band, playing together with a surprisingly well-integrated ensemble sound, swinging with the ease and elan of players a decade older, offered stunning affirmation of Cosby’s reference to both the vitality and the continuing significance of America’s music.