Gilles Peterson has spent his entire career buoyed by gushing enthusiasm, but when the London-based DJ and record label boss declared a gig in Tokyo on May 4 to be a ¡°career highlight,¡± he was probably being sincere.

The Twitter outburst came during the climax of Worldwide Session, a scaled-up version of the annual Worldwide Showcase concerts that Peterson used to host at Tokyo¡¯s Liquidroom venue. Club-jazz crowd-pleasers Soil & ¡°Pimp¡± Sessions were sharing a stage with famed trumpeter Terumasa Hino, and the tune they were playing ¡ª Hino¡¯s propulsive 1981 cut, ¡°Merry Go Round¡± ¡ª was one with special significance to Peterson: it had been a source text for the U.K. acid jazz boom that he helped spearhead in the late-1980s.

Hino¡¯s headline collaboration with Soil & ¡°Pimp¡± Sessions proved to be an entertaining, if lopsided, affair. Given the band¡¯s reputation for sustained athleticism in their live sets, it was interesting to see how they accommodated a strutting alpha-male ego like Hino, one of the only Japanese jazz musicians who could be described as a household name. Soil¡¯s regular trumpeter, Tabu Zombie, visibly eased up when the band¡¯s big-name collaborator left the stage, but saxophonist Motoharu proved more game, sparring in an energetic flurry of back-and-forth riffs.

Earlier in the day, violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson celebrated his birthday by leading his Ensemble through its debut Japan performance. A promiscuous figure on the Los Angeles music circuit, Atwood-Ferguson marries classical chops with strong links to the hip-hop scene (he¡¯s signed to Brainfeeder, the label run by producer Flying Lotus). There were occasional hints of boom-bap during his hour-long set, but it stuck largely within a recognizable jazz idiom, deploying lush, ¡®70s-style chord progressions that evoked the unseasonably balmy weather outside.

Listeners tuning in to The Sun Ra Arkestra for the first time might have been pardoned for thinking they were a conventional big band with an unusual penchant for sequins. The costumes were outlandish, the music less so: in the course of an amiable but rather pedestrian performance, the group delivered off-kilter versions of familiar standards (¡°When You Wish Upon a Star,¡± ¡°Every Day I Got the Blues¡°) but only occasionally hinted at the cosmic weirdness that it¡¯s capable of channeling ¡ª notably during a rendition of the chaotic, polyrhythmic ¡°Dancing Shadows¡± late in the set.

Then again, even its more ordinary moments were enlivened by the presence of bandleader Marshall Allen, whose discordant saxophone shrieks and synthesizer lines ¡ª played on a Steiner EVI wind controller ¡ª brought a welcome touch of chaos to the proceedings. That he¡¯s due to mark his 92nd birthday later this month is remarkable.