A saxophonist with a searing tone honed in the bands of Charles Mingus, Art Blakey and Miles Davis, Gary Bartz is often depicted as one of jazz’s great improvisers.

He doesn’t see himself that way.

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Awarded the nation’s highest jazz honor last year by the National Endowment for the Arts, the 84-year-old Bartz resists describing his music as impromptu creation. He’d rather people see his music as the result of intensive cultivation.

“That’s one thing that is misunderstood, when I perform you’re watching me write,” said Bartz, whose move to Emeryville in 2018 hasn’t made him any less of a scarce presence on Bay Area stages. He performs with an all-star quintet April 24 at Yoshi’s in Oakland, and April 25 at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center.

The Baltimore-raised Bartz moved to New York City in 1958 to study at Juilliard and majored in composition because the conservatory didn’t have a jazz program. His tunes draw on a broad spectrum of Black American music, seamlessly encompassing blues, funk and R&B along with bebop and avant garde directions forged by Ornette Coleman (which are also steeped in the blues).

Bartz’s point in rejecting the term “improvisation” is that he proceeds with a plan. He’s composing with his group as he plays.

“I’m not just taking licks and stringing them together,” he said on a recent video call, looking and sounding more like someone starting to receive AARP solicitations than an octogenarian.

“I’m recomposing all the time. I’m really thinking about how it starts, developing thematic material, and where we’re going so everybody knows where we’re ending.”

Getting set to release a series of new albums after more than a decade since his last project as a leader, Bartz has been retooling his band since the departure of his longtime pianist and music director Barney McCall (who moved back to Australia).

He brings a heavyweight New York combo to the Bay Area featuring drummer Kassa Overall and guitarist Paul Bollenback, a brilliant accompanist who’s worked intermittently with Bartz for decades, though he’s best known as a longtime collaborator with the late Hammond B3 maestro Joey DeFrancesco.

“His focus and energy, the fact that he doesn’t stop learning, he amazes me,” Bollenback said. “He’s got the spring in his step of a 40-year-old. I’ve been working regularly with him again since around 2018 and it’s always great to play with him. It’s nice to see him get some real momentum with his own working band.”

Filling in for Bartz’s longtime bassist James King is Rueben Rogers, who’s performed around the region dozens of times in groups led by saxophonist Joshua Redman, vocalist Dianne Reeves, and tenor sax legend Charles Lloyd, among many others.

Marc Cary, another musician who’s worked widely around the Bay Area over the past three decades, is playing piano and Fender Rhodes. He heard many stories about Bartz as a young musician from his mentor, bebop piano great Walter Davis Jr., so it seemed natural when they started hanging out during his formative stints with vocalist Betty Carter and drummer Arthur Taylor.

“He’d scoop me up after the gig and drop a lot of knowledge about health and longevity in this business,” Cary recalled. “I’ve always had this sense, that’s my big brother. Getting to play with him recently has been awesome. I’m learning a lot, I can tell you that. His knowledge and musical taste is so vast. It’s been an opportunity to go deeper into the music than I would have gone myself.”

Cary first recorded with Bartz when the saxophonist joined trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s band as a special guest on the 1993 live album “Of Kindred Souls,” which includes tracks recorded at Kuumbwa, Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, and the old Yoshi’s on Claremont Avenue.

With his lithe touch on the Rhodes, he’s an ideal accompanist for the songs that Bartz has been exploring, including pieces by El DeBarge, Patti Labelle, Anita Baker, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Reed. When he feels like it Bartz puts down his horn to sing. He’s not concerned about definitions or labels.

“We play music, and I don’t see music as categories,” he said. “That’s for business people to deal with. I’d rather not deal with that. I was watching a video of Miles Davis when we played the Isle of Wight in 1970, and they asked him ‘What are you going to play?’ He said, ‘Call it anything.’ It’s just a name,” and from the horn of Bartz, it’s going to sound sweet, and tangy and full of soul.

Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].

GARY BARTZ

When & where: 8 p.m. April 23-24 at Yoshi’s, Oakland; $39-$79; www.yoshis.com; 7 p.m. April 25 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $26.25-$52.50; www.kuumbwajazz.org;