The pianist Dave Burrell sat onstage at Roulette on Wednesday, his sizable frame stooped over the keyboard with a combination of studious grace and earnest fascination. From his hands came a slow, elegant tidewater of chords, unresolved and Impressionistic. The tune was “Crucificado,” an original that he first performed in the 1970s in Archie Shepp’s band.

Mr. Shepp, a tenor saxophonist who was one day shy of 81, was perched a few feet away. A standing-room-only crowd filled every crevice of the Brooklyn theater, which was celebrating the kickoff of the 23rd annual Vision Festival.

Mr. Burrell is the lifetime achievement honoree at this year’s event, which continues through Monday, and Wednesday’s concert celebrated his work from various angles. Rarely does the spotlight fall so squarely on Mr. Burrell. He reflects the pianist’s archetype in some ways — a composer, a historian, an omnivore, a strategist — but not in others. He is uncommonly good at guiding and helping to sustain a group without taking up a lot of space, even in the most hot-blooded flurry of group improvising. Now 77, he remains defined by his sideman work, though his ambitious works as a bandleader and composer has helped connect anarchic avant-gardism with a vast historical family of music from America, Europe and Africa.

On Wednesday Mr. Burrell played three energizing sets — but fittingly, the centerpiece was billed as a performance by the Archie Shepp Quartet. In the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Shepp — a more well-known figure in jazz, and now a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master — was Mr. Burrell’s steadiest employer. Together they represented something like an allied force for strong, perceptive memory and compositional vision within the avant-garde insurgency.