With their vibrant performances of John Alden Carpenter’s three ballet scores, Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project have captured the excitement of a pivotal decade in American culture and spotlit a composer who might well be considered a buttoned-up counterpart to his fellow businessman/composer Charles Ives.

While Carpenter’s musical language shows influences of Strauss, John Knowles Paine, Weill, Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov among others, he blends them into a personal, highly entertaining idiom with an easy command of the orchestral palette and an ear for jazz and other New World vibes.

Based on a popular comic strip, Krazy Kat (1921, rev 1940) has a compelling narrative sense that includes snappy dances and a brilliant conclusion. The Birthday of the Infanta (1917, rev 1940) evokes a sophisticated Diaghilevesque atmosphere. The score for Skyscrapers exudes architectural energy and jaunty elegance recalling Fred and Ginger; it was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1926 with an all-Black chorus just for the occasion.

The Project’s musicians inhabit Carpenter’s world with cool precision and an exhilarating sense of motion, although they don’t quite go as far as the unbuttoned trombone glissandos in Calvin Simmons’s 1977 recording of Krazy Kat with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The recordings, which were made in three Boston-area halls, each provide the immediate, you-are-there impact of the best direct-to-disc vinyl. The booklet includes the composer’s original notes and an excellent introduction by Maureen Buja.