When I reached on the phone at his home in San Francisco he was immersed in the music of Duke Ellington. Literally.

Marcus Shelby

“I’m surrounded by big band charts,” he said, while taking a short break from methodically organizing sheet music sent to him by pianist Jason Moran in preparation for their four-night run in the Feb. 6-9.

SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium

“These Ellington charts that Jason got his hands on, some are well known and some are rarely played,” Shelby said. “Some we play traditionally, and some are more experimental. In all of them Jason has found interesting episodes where we go off into different vamps or tangents or extensions.”

One of jazz’s most influential and restlessly creative figures, the Houston-raised, Harlem-based Moran has been a bracing presence at the SFJAZZ Center since it opened. constructed on stage and reinterpreted the joyous music of Fats Waller while adorned with a giant papier-maché head of the ebullient pianist and composer.

He’s accompanied skateboarders navigating a half-pipe

For Moran’s first collaboration with Shelby, who presented the pianist in a solo recital last week at Healdsburg Jazz’s inaugural Winter Festival, he’s taken a full-spectrum approach to the Maestro’s canon. He’s an artist given to large-scale, historically informed productions, but in this case the only guiding principle was to avoid a usual-suspects set list.