Washington — The family of noted American jazz educator and pianist Ellis Marsalis Jr. has a favorite anecdote harking back to tougher times in New Orleans, when a steady income was hard to come by. One day, a local clergyman approached Marsalis and asked when he was going to put jazz aside “and play the Lord’s music.”

“That’s what I do every day,” the musician responded.

Performing and teaching aside, the greatest achievement of the venerable Marsalis, 74, and his wife, Delores, has been raising one of the most accomplished clans in the history of American popular culture. Their sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason are world-renowned talents. Wynton also is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for music. A fifth son, Ellis III, has made his mark as a photographer, poet and computer-network consultant.

Notwithstanding his reputation as New Orleans’ premier modern jazz pianist, the senior Marsalis — who laid the groundwork not only for his sons but also for such talented students as musician/actor Harry Connick Jr. - is a man of few words, preferring to sidle up to the keyboard and let his music do the talking.

That’s exactly where he was on June 15, before a sold-out gathering in the Concert Hall of Washington’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, as his sons, plus Connick and the gifted pianist Billy Taylor, gathered in a rare assemblage to celebrate this “jazz master” at the annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival and to present him with a lifetime achievement award.

It was a worthy tribute to a man who, Branford said, “lives and breathes faith, family and country,” and who is blessed, in Jason’s words, “with a simple discipline for the task at hand.”

The brothers played their instruments of choice — Branford on tenor and soprano saxophones, Wynton with his trumpet, Delfeayo handling the trombone, and Jason on drums and vibes. To offset their father’s laconic nature, they mixed their music with a string of embracing stories that — when woven together — offered a tapestry of the public and the personal, illuminating their father’s career and mindset amid a family history of challenges and triumphs.

As Ellis and Delores raised their sons in their small home in Kenner, Louisiana, near New Orleans, theirs was not always an easy life. To make ends meet, Ellis combined performing with work as a teacher at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a local secondary school. The teaching position launched him as an educator. His breadth of knowledge and his skill at transmitting his artistry led to posts at Virginia Commonwealth University and, ultimately, as head of the jazz studies program at the University of New Orleans. At the same time, he taught privately, which is how Connick and many others encountered him.

At the evening tribute to their father, the Marsalis brothers used the occasion to present details of the soon-to-be-completed Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, at the Musicians’ Village in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward — the sector of the city that was hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The Marsalis Center will include a 150-seat performance space, plus recording studio facilities and places for individual and group instruction. The center will own five elder-friendly duplexes in the village that will be rented exclusively to musicians.

For the most part, the Kennedy Center event was driven by the music mirroring the Marsalis patriarch’s special gifts and affinities — from jive and soft ballads to a lush piano rendition (by Ellis and Taylor) of “Body and Soul” and the down-home New Orleans sounds of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” culminating in a robust parade through the Concert Hall’s aisles.

But the message of a life well-lived, and lessons learned, shone through.

One time, Wynton remembered, he came upon his father performing late at night in a sleepy hotel club, with only a handful of people in attendance, who were talking through the music. Did the conversation bother him? the boy asked. “Shhh!” his father hissed. Wynton pressed the point, wondering why he didn’t just pack up and go home.

“I agreed to play this gig,” his father said reproachfully. “The gig needs to be played. There are people here. A promise made must be kept.”