Had it not been the first day of the 17th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Sept. 23 still would have been a big day for jazz fans.

During his set with poet Nikki Giovanni, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson rattled off some of the major musical names born that day, to hearty applause by a packed audience in Hyde Park Union Church. Ray Charles. Frank Foster. Les McCann. “Bruce Springsteen, too… (the applause shriveled) … and John Coltrane.” The crowd exploded.

Welcome to the Hyde Park Jazz Fest, where Bird, Billie and Blakey inspire more ardor than the Boss. The festival punches in the same weight class as the Chicago Jazz Fest when it comes to megastar billings but arguably covers a wider spread in half the time. Saturday alone included two NEA Jazz Masters in veteran drummer Louis Hayes and pianist Kenny Barron; a dealer’s-choice spread of free jazz talent; three acts that toed into classical or third stream; the screening of a documentary about Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge; and a DJ set to close out the outdoor stages on the Midway Plaisance.

Still, that’s just a sampling. Because humans have not, to date, mastered time travel, any view of this full-to-bursting festival is a partial one. But even of the sets I heard, Coltrane’s “Naima” became a birthday refrain, relayed in a moderately swinging version by Hayes and his quintet (including some of the players and the same instrumentation off his recent album, “Exactly Right!”) and pealed on carillon on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday included a more somber tribute, too. In the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute), cornetists Josh Berman and Ben LaMar Gay recreated elements of a trio set they’d played at the Experimental Sound Studio in 2016 at the invitation of trumpeter jaimie branch, who died last year at 39. Their trio now a duo, Berman and Gay gave voice to their grief in a transfixing, even cathartic hour-long performance. Berman’s blistering lines seemed to be an outgrowth of the anguish pent up in his body, sometimes also spilling over into a stomped foot; Gay’s long, breathlike tones, both sung or played, gave them spiritual grounding.

Another enthralling duo came together a couple blocks away, at Augustana Lutheran Church. With the conviction and clarity of a two-man treatise, multireedist Jeff Chan and percussionist Suwan Choi combined free improvisation with traditional Korean instrumentation. Choi set the mood of each section, whether laying down a galloping rhythm on galgo (a double-headed hourglass drum) or experimenting with the many sounds of a jing gong, while Chan sported over him on tenor sax, flute and bass clarinet.

But as with last year, my favorite set of the festival took root at the Logan Center Performance Hall. Dee Alexander’s Ancestors Reign was every ounce the supergroup it had promised to be, featuring pianist Alexis Lombre, violinist Zara Zaharieva, bassist Emma Dayhuff, multi-instrumentalist Coco Elysses and percussionist JoVia Armstrong, with Alexander singing and Nejla Yatkin performing improvised choreography. Not only did they sizzle with some of the tightest, most inventive ensemble playing all day, but the band’s delight in one another was obvious, and contagious.

Other sets were rougher around the edges, but their roughness was a feature, not a bug. On Saturday, Endea Owens and her charismatic Cookout band conquered mic feedback and ensemble miscommunication to deliver a knockout show on the Wagner Stage that led an audience chorus through “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and brought nearly 100 people to their feet for the “Electric Slide.” Earlier, Owens introduced “Cycles,” whose composer was “one of (her) biggest inspirations, someone who gives me the strength to go on.”

“And that composer … is me,” she said, before launching into the exciting, anthemic number.

Giovanni would have no doubt approved of Owens’s self-love wisdom. Earlier that day, during a live version of “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni,” the acclaimed poet’s spirituals album with Jackson, Giovanni had riveted a past-capacity crowd with songs and readings of her poems “Their Fathers” and “Ego Tripping.”

In truth, Giovanni covered little ground from the album, and as she herself admits, she’s not much of a singer. But her appearance was less about the music itself than the stories behind them, tales that swung between the uproarious and profound. She told the crowd she wanted to include “Night Song” on the album because Nina Simone, a close friend, had long felt it was one of her most underrated recordings. Later, Giovanni teased a possible future project based around Great American Songbook classics her mother loved, like “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.”

At one point, Giovanni had to navigate a tense moment when a man briefly shouted her down from the back of Hyde Park Union Church. It was hard to grasp what, exactly, the heckler was getting at, but he seemed to accuse Giovanni of having “blood on her hands” after the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where Giovanni taught until last year. (Giovanni had alerted her colleagues to the gunman’s violent fixations early on.) Giovanni calmly stared down the man until he was done raving and the door clicked behind him. Then, she picked up exactly where she’d left off midsentence, to admiring applause.

If Giovanni took us to church through her words, Kenny Barron did the same with his music later that night. The Hyde Park Jazz Fest always reserves a major headliner for its Saturday red-eye set in Rockefeller Chapel, drawing a self-selecting throng of bitter-enders. People began filing in an hour early; the audience numbered between 200 and 300 people just before Barron began playing.

“I’m surprised there’s so many of you. I’m in bed by 11 o’clock,” Barron quipped.

If Barron was at all tired, his focused, transcendent playing didn’t show it. He brought a watercolor touch to “For Heaven’s Sake” and his own “Sunshower.” Other originals followed, like “Song for Abdullah,” a ballad inspired by hearing memories of hearing pianist Abdullah Ibrahim play, and “Calypso,” which revisited Barron’s early years playing piano in a West Indian band by way of Thelonious Monk.

In fact, Barron was partway through a Monk title, “Shuffle Boil,” when someone, or something, accidentally killed the lights above the altar, plunging Barron and his concert grand into near-darkness. Barron didn’t miss a beat, or a note. The lights came back on before the end of the tune, but he didn’t acknowledge the snafu at all in his warm, informative comments between pieces.

Had it been a dream? It almost felt that way. But that moment was as real as they come: Barron faintly illuminated from behind, his monkish pate stooped over the keys in silhouette, as strangers sat shoulder-to-shoulder in something like prayer.

Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.

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