Branford Marsalis pays tribute to Bob French and Alvin Batiste, two of New Orleans’ best-known jazz musicians, on the latest releases in his “Honors Series.” The resulting albums are very different because French and Batiste couldn’t be more different. French plays traditional New Orleans jazz, while Batiste works in an avant-garde vein. Listening to these two records, however, it’s clear that they both know how to please a crowd. That’s no surprise from the traditionalist French. Batiste, though, proves that contemporary jazz can be smart and invigorating yet still accessible.

Drummer and singer French, leader of the almost 100-year-old Original Tuxedo Band, performs an easygoing set of traditional jazz on Marsalis Music Honors Bob French. Several of the city’s jazz stars—Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews on trombone, Harry Connick, Jr. on piano and Marsalis himself on sax, join him for a pleasant romp through some Crescent City classics. They play with contemporary polish, but the music is all old-time nostalgia. It’s the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s version of New Orleans. “Big shots” still stroll down Bourbon Street. “Elites always meet” on Basin Street. And when Ellen Smith takes over the vocals for an elegant rendition of “Do You Know What It Means (To Miss New Orleans)” there’s not hint that half the city never came home after Katrina. The record is lovely escapism, but more entertainment than art.

Clarinetist Batiste is best known in New Orleans as an educator. Beyond the city, he’s not known well enough. Like many musicians who worked outside New York City and focused their lives on education, Batiste has been shamefully under recorded. As Marsalis Music Honors Alvin Batiste makes clear, the jazz world would have benefited from more albums by Batiste, who plays in a modern, avant-garde manner that could win over skeptics of that style. He can play with a breezy intelligence, as he does on the opening track “Clean Air,” without ever sounding weightless. On “The Latest,” the band swings into action with a burst of energy and never lets up. The funky workout “Bumps,” with a squealing solo by Batiste, would bring the house down live. The young pianist Lawrence Fields , who graduates from the Berklee College of Music in 2008, also stands out for his beautiful, often haunting work. Batiste plays with the easy confidence of a musician with decades of experience. It’s a joy to listen to him work through extended musical ideas without every taking a wrong turn.