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Jazz  is deceptively difficult to play, even at its most subtle. Madeleine Peyroux is among its most subtle practitioners.

But Peyroux and her band made it  seem easy in a laid-back, Sunday night show at a sold-out Jefferson Center. The 900-some people in attendance gave her two standing ovations.

Peyroux, a Georgia-born world traveler, treated the audience to her own “Don’t Wait Too Long” and “I’m All Right,” as well as covers such as Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love.” At the heart of it all was her voice, which sounds kind of world-weary but hardly beaten, still willing to go for the idiosyncratic phrase or melody. There were few surprises — an exception was her funky New Orleans-style take on the country classic, “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

Peyroux is a deft guitar player, unfazed by any number of finger-stretching jazz chords. On her ragtime interpretation of Bessie Smith’s “Don’t Cry Baby,” her right thumb alternated bass notes while her fingers played syncopated rhythms and melodies. On Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Javanaise,” she provided chord colors as she dueted with bassist Johannes Weidenmuller.

Most of the intrumental highlights came from keyboardist Jim Beard, a veteran of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, who has performed with hard-bop guitarist Mike Stern. Beard played such an engaging solo on the show closer, “J’ai Deux Amours,” that Peyroux did not anticipate going back into the vocal.

“You did that on purpose,” she joked as the verse lolled by.

With her own vocal adventures, stretching and twisting phrases to new purposes, one could accuse her of the same.