Michael C. Hall singing at the Cutting Room. Photograph by Alice Plati

Earlier this month, at the Cutting Room, on East Thirty-second Street, several of David Bowie's close collaborators—including Henry Hey, who worked with Bowie on his musical, “Lazarus”; Donny McCaslin, whose jazz ensemble played on Bowie’s final album, “Blackstar”; members of Bowie’s band; and the stars of “Lazarus,” Michael C. Hall and Cristin Milioti—put on a stellar, affectionate concert of his songs. Bowie died on January 10th, two days after his sixty-ninth birthday and the release of “Blackstar.” Now, in September, after so much 2016 mayhem and mishegas, it was deeply satisfying to spend an evening back in the presence of his music.

The Cutting Room, a mid-sized food-and-drink joint, is a space somewhere between elegant and oddball, with cavalier sight lines and a grandiose proscenium arch that obscures many views of the stage. Before the show, I couldn’t see it at all. When I heard drumsticks click together, and the joyous, defiant opening guitar of “Rebel Rebel,” I rushed to the railing, excited—sorry, nice couple eating dinner—and stayed there the rest of the night. Henry Hey, floppy-haired and tranquil, stood at a keyboard at center stage right, surrounded by the musicians he had organized, smiling like a benevolent spaceship commander. Milioti sang “Changes,” low and reedy, without hitting the unhinged heights she’d had to reach in “Lazarus,” when she was in character. “Lazarus,” which begins performances in London in late October, is Bowie and Enda Walsh’s highly stylized riff on “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” directed by Ivo van Hove, with Michael C. Hall in the central role as a dissolute, khaki-wearing zillionaire who wants to return to outer space. Musically, it functions as a sort of Bowie retrospective. In the New York production, the band was behind a glass wall, and I had wanted a more visceral connection to the music; here, I had it.

Hall came onstage in a black T-shirt and did some aggressive microphone adjusting. At the first, freaky notes of “Ashes to Ashes,” there was a new thrill in the air. Hall was raw and in command, occasionally singing with his eyes closed. “They got a message from the action man,” he sang. He extended an arm up, rock-star style, and pointed a finger in the air. “I’m happy; hope you’re happy, too.” As a presence, Hall has an edge that, to me, comes from mystery and a hint of menace. He played a serial killer on “Dexter,” of course, but his peevish undertaker David Fisher on “Six Feet Under” was no more reassuring. (I wish I’d seen what he did with Hedwig.) As a performer, he doesn’t exude a need to be loved; here, without a character to interpret, he became both more accessible and more enigmatic.

Much has been said about the extraordinary way in which Bowie spent his final couple of years; it is unusual for an artist to go out the way he did. He knew that he was sick, and he worked, beautifully and prolifically, right up until the end. His collaborators on those projects—younger, healthier, and earlier in their careers—poured themselves into “Lazarus” and “Blackstar,” having new creative experiences in the service of Bowie’s work. Bowie died when “Lazarus” was in its final weeks and “Blackstar” had just come out. Many of these younger collaborators were shaken by his death; they were also still in the thick of those projects. The “Lazarus” cast recording happened, as scheduled, the day after Bowie died. After the magisterial “Blackstar” came out, McCaslin and his band found themselves as its unexpected representatives. I had interviewed Hey in December and McCaslin and his band in late January, on the radio. To seem them playing together, with other of Bowie'w peers, felt good. The show had a lightness that might not have been possible earlier in the year.

The band played “Sound and Vision,” with its wonderfully long intro, that bouncing spree you can bob along in endlessly. Hall appeared after a while. “Blue, blue, electric blue,” he sang. All night, the singers were engaged, energetic, in the moment, performing seventies and eighties Bowie faithfully but without approaching camp. Just about everybody wore unassuming rock-and-roll black, with a few exceptions. Maika Makovski, who sang “Let’s Dance,” wore a shirt with elements of bodysuit, cutout, shininess, and fake fur, a garment that felt Bowie-esque; when she sang “tremble like a flower,” she made a move that reminded me of Bowie’s hilarious pose on the cover of “Heroes.”

“Space Oddity” is an epic journey of a song; you have to be in the mood to embark on it. It’s a little bit sacred, and, as a cover, especially, it has to be done right. This was: acoustic guitar, quiet, countdown, liftoff. The liftoff, spiraling upward, was cathartic, and “This is ground control to Major Tom” was doubly so. Hey wiggled his fingers around “far above the world” just before “Planet Earth is blue.” We were all floating far above 2016, in the Bowie stratosphere.

One of the great joys of the show was seeing and hearing McCaslin, whose saxophone virtuosity had provided so much gorgeous melancholy on “Blackstar,” playing Bowie’s sax-heavy eighties hits—“Blue Jean” and all the rest. (“On ‘Let’s Dance,’ he ripped it!” a man near to me said to his companion. Serious moonlight, serious saxophone.) The first half of the show closed with “Modern Love,” which seemed to be seventy per cent sax. During his solos, McCaslin stepped forward, crouched down, and leaned over, eyes closed. He played it out with a flurry of fast, high notes—the sound of modern love walking on by.

Catherine Russell and Everett Bradley, who had both played and toured with Bowie, each sang a great song brilliantly (“Hang On to Yourself,” “Suffragette City”). Together, singing “Under Pressure,” they were pure joy. Russell sang the Bowie parts; Bradley was so good at the soaring Freddie Mercury bits—the nonsense blips sailing into the stratosphere—that you had to laugh in admiration. At the end of the lovely “Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word” section, they reached up and touched hands, breaking off slowly at “This is our last dance, this is ourselves.” The mood was euphoric. (“ ‘Under Pressure’ got a little heavy,” the bassist, Mark Plati, said later, by the bar, where he and Russell were reminiscing about Bowie. Russell remembered Bowie’s humor on tour. “One night, he had on that Armani suit,” she said. “I told him, ‘You look real good in that suit.’ He says, ‘I'm a happily married man.’ ”)

When Hall sang “Lazarus,” from “Blackstar,” the mood shifted toward sombre affection—awe and grief, rather than nostalgia and celebration. “Look up here, I’m in heaven,” Hall sang. “I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” McCaslin played the saxophone, leaning forward, blowing hard. The song has three descending sax notes that keep reminding you of something grim and sad; after a while these flow into a long, cathartic solo, which a chorus of audience members spontaneously recorded with their phones. People shook their heads as they listened to the solo, which soared on and on, up and up. McCaslin, standing up straight again, soldiered on, playing the three descending notes again. Hall patted him on the shoulder. (“It was really emotional for me,” McCaslin told me later. “It was the first time I played “Lazarus” with a vocalist who wasn’t David.”)

Hey said, “This is a joyous occasion for us, because this music is nothing but happiness for us. With that, we leave you with this.” The band played “Ziggy Stardust”—funny, classic, meta, and present at once. “So where were the spiders?” the whole room sang.

“I lied,” Hey said. “We have one more.” It was “Heroes,” of course—at first, just Hall, a little guitar, and drums. “I—I will be king,” he sang. He pointed at Hey, at the crowd. “And you—you will be queen.” I’ve always enjoyed the anguish and desperation of this song, its transcendence and daydreaming, its you-and-me-kid spirit—the feeling that we are not heroes, but what if, rather crazily, we could be? I love the fact that it’s the imagining that sounds so majestic. The other singers came onstage and joined in. “Just for one day,” they sang. As the refrain wound down, there was cheering onstage and off. Behind the singers, almost unobserved, McCaslin played his saxophone, all the way to the end.