Note: story has been update to correct 2 musicians' IDs.

Pianist Danilo Pérez paid homage to his mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, Thursday in a way that the pioneering bebop trumpeter and musical iconoclast certainly would have appreciated.

Playing at Hill Auditorium with his phenomenal septet, Pérez turned Diz’s songbook inside out, rendering all but the song’s essential structures unrecognizable, while breathing new life into tunes that have otherwise become standards.

The Panama-born Danilo Pérez is a pianist of remarkable restraint and uncanny rhythmic presence. On Thursday, he appeared content to sit back and let his more-than-capable bandmates do most of the heavy lifting, while providing accents, grace notes and repeated motifs that both propelled the music and added a stately grace to it.

But make no mistake, in spite of its elegance, Thursday’s performance was dominated by a spirit of communal fun that found the septet joyously trading choruses through re-imagined Gillespie staples like “Woody’n You” and “A Night in Tunisia,” which was reconceived for the show as “A Night in Ann Arbor.”

The unusually instrumented band was more than the sum of its parts. Drummer Adam Cruz and percussionist Jamey Haddad paired up to provide a supple foundation, allowing alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa to take frequent flight, tearing off runs that were equally inspired by bebop and afro-Cuban elements.

Sanchez and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar teamed up for a remarkable deconstructed reading of “Salt Peanuts,” which found the duo weaving in and out of each other’s lines in a slow build that eventually found the song’s familiar refrain. It was a deeply satisfying musical turn that deservedly received 1 of the evening’s heartiest rounds of applause.

Pérez took center stage for a gorgeous reading of Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” in which just he, bassist Ben Street, Cruz and Haddad took apart the tune and put it back together. Pérez took the simplest melodic lines and re-imagined them, accenting different notes and occasionally reaching inside his Steinway to dull notes and give them more percussive effect.

Listen to Danilo Pérez “‘Round Midnight”:

Tenor saxophonist David Sanchez was the most understated of the horn section. However, his solos said so much with so little — particularly in relation to the fireworks that the others frequently set off — that his solos were the most satisfying of the evening.

Pérez is without question 1 of the premier pianists working at the vanguard of jazz. But on Thursday, it was as much fun to watch him watching his band carrying the musical load as it was when he stepped forward on his own.

The University Musical Society brings countless world-class jazz bands to Ann Arbor, but it’s rare that one demonstrates the pure joy of playing music that Pérez and his band did on Thursday.

Will Stewart is a free-lance writer for AnnArbor.com.