Jazz lovers were in bebop heaven Sunday at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, where the music’s avatar alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and his quintet delivered a staple of familiar tunes. And after a blistering opening, McPherson introduced his surprise guest, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. The front men settled comfortably into Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” although with no explicit play on the beautiful melody.

There was a similar interplay of horns on Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love,” with Konitz taking the lead and McPherson complementing with short bravura statements and spurts of sound. Their knowledge of tune’s harmonic contours allows them to improvise in a dual way, at times repeating the other’s line, and then finding a place to further orchestrate the performance.

What stood out throughout the evening was the individual and collective facility. The rhythm section was consistently impressive with Jonathan Blake underpinning Jeb Patton’s pianistic excursions, guitarist Yotam Silberstein’s sparkling chromatic runs and Todd Coolman’s often unobtrusive but guiding bass. Patton’s solos were colorful displays, thrilling mixtures of blues and classical elements.

All of the singular brilliance cohered when the quintet closed the set with “Cherokee.” On this anthem of bebop, McPherson set a scorching pace, his solo summoning the other Charles, that is “Bird” Parker, and then taking the style to another level of appreciation. Some of the listeners who had heard McPherson when he was a teenager in Detroit must have received a rush of emotional nostalgia.

Again Blake’s drums provided surges of syncopation, sometimes modulating the beat on the cymbals and the tom-tom, and then interrupting the flow with powerful commentary from the bass drum. Silberstein answered with slides along the frets and Wes Montgomery-like chords that meshed perfectly with Patton’s bluesy intonations. And for a moment the guitar and piano landed on a tinge of samba that brought a smile to the Brazilian couple at our table. Coolman, like his name, was poised and kept to the meter, gradually setting the stage for McPherson’s final triumphant entry—and exit.

It was an evening of bebop reverie, an experience made all the more memorable when Konitz and McPherson merged their potent imaginations.