At 82, Dave Brubeck still packs ’em in, still leaves ’em cheering, and still plays work of musical and emotional substance. Last Sunday, he and his quartet played a second Boston-area sold-out show, at Sanders Theatre (the night before they’d been at Berklee Performance Center). The last big college-campus jazz rage before rock and roll took over completely, Brubeck drew college students of both yesteryear and the present to the Sanders show. He performed old hits but also some as-yet-unrecorded material. Both his writing and his playing were in good shape.

The first set opened with his now-standard ballad, "In Your Own Sweet Way" (he said he was wary of performing his usual curtain raiser, "St. Louis Blues," because he hadn’t played the Sanders Steinway before and would have to "work too hard" at the fast tempo). Here was a showcase for bassist Michael Moore’s guitar-like pizzicato and the lighter and airier side of Bobby Militello’s alto, which recalled the sound of the saxophonist with whom Brubeck became famous, Paul Desmond. "Yesterdays" got a Latinized treatment and a fugal out-chorus with some tricky counterpoint improvising between Brubeck and Militello (this is one of the trademarks of Brubeck’s ensemble approach). On a slow blues, Brubeck jacked up the intensity by backing Militello’s solo with triplet-eighth-note chording. On a newer piece, "The Crossing," Militello galloped over the steeplechase of Brubeck’s repeated ascending-chord structure. And "I Got Rhythm" was perfect for Brubeck’s rhythmic, chordal style — he pounded out staccato on-the-beat chords behind Militello and played clamorous stride rhythms in his left hand that accompanied stabbing chords in the right. A ballad dedicated to his wife, "All My Love," was full of rhapsodic harmonies.

The second set provided an opportunity for Brubeck to play "some new songs that we don’t know," including a somewhat bumptious waltz inspired by his many trips to Vienna ("a stupid thing to do when you go to Vienna," he said of its writing) that nonetheless featured some of his beautiful tolling-bell chording. For a while now, he’s been focusing much of his composing on large-scale works, and a piece from his forthcoming Mass to Hope, scored for soprano voice, featured Militello’s creamy, full-bodied flute playing. There was lovely flute-piano unison voicing on "Elegy," and a piece from Brubeck’s 1964 Jazz Impressions of Japan that gave Militello plenty of room to showboat. And, of course, there was "Take Five," the 1959 Desmond tune that established Brubeck’s stardom. Closing the show with a stentorian Randy Jones drum solo, it brought the crowd to its feet.