It was everywhere, rustling through conversations the way a breeze moves through trees, in the smirks and jokes of some, in the extended, slightly nervous ovation the President and Mrs. Clinton received as they walked into the East Room of the White House on Friday night for a Millennium lecture on jazz. It was the President's Problem, and it colored the event. The musicians onstage spent much of their time, as did the audience, analyzing the way the President and his wife interacted, how they played their public roles, how, in the middle of a Greek tragedy, they were doing.
The concert and lecture, the fourth this year in a series planned by the White House to bring together experts on a particular subject, had the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the pianist Marian McPartland as hosts. The audience of about 100 included the Czech President, Vaclav Havel; Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright; Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, and William J. Ivey, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, along with some of jazz's more important figures. The saxophonist Wayne Shorter showed up, as did the bassist Ron Carter; the saxophonist and band leader Illinois Jacquet; the head of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Dan Morgenstern, and the social critic Stanley Crouch.
Put together by a coalition of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Thelonious Monk Institute in Washington, and broadcast on VH-1 and C-Span, the lecture included speeches by the President (who talked about how influential a whole series of musicians had been on his life, including Charlie Parker, Monk and John Coltrane), Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Havel. Mr. Marsalis and Ms. McPartland spoke, as did two jazz educators, Dr. Billy Taylor and David Baker. Ms. McPartland, Mr. Marsalis and Dr. Taylor played music that underscored their points. And a big band, made up mostly of members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, did some roaring.
The show was meant to to put jazz in its national and international context. At the end, questions were taken on the Internet from Britain, Canada and the United States.
There was some suspicion that the event had been put together to show that the President could continue with the life of the country despite the Problem. The event, organizers said, was planned some six weeks ago.
Dr. Taylor, who had given a short lecture and demonstration of be-bop, heard something in what Mr. Havel was saying.
And there were some strong moments musically, too, with the big band performing Duke Ellington's ''Harlem Airshaft,'' swinging it thoroughly. Mr. Marsalis opened the musical portion of the lecture with a duet with Ms. McPartland on ''St. Louis Blues'' that had him tossing burred notes throughout the piece; it all led to his thesis, which bubbled through the entire lecture, that jazz is perfectly emblematic of democracy. The balance, goes the thesis, between the individual desires of the soloist and the necessity of the group is democracy in esthetic action.
Sherman Irby, an alto saxophonist in the big band, was watching the President.
Other musicians felt the same way. After the performance, a small group of musicians in the dark outside the White House waited for a ride back to the hotel.
''He's the hippest President we've ever had,'' said Eric Lewis, the pianist in the orchestra.