One concert could hardly contain the multiplicity of Prince’s enormous songwriting catalog over the 35 years since he released his debut album, “For You,” in 1978. “The Music of Prince,” a tribute concert on Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, tried hard. The program strove to capture a broad swath of Prince’s work, through funk and rock and pop, from lust to spirituality to apocalypse to partying. It included hits, rarities and even some of Prince’s dance moves (but alas, no leaping splits). It was the ninth annual “Music of” concert produced by Michael Dorf, the owner of City Winery, to benefit music programs for underprivileged children.

With the Roots as a house band, the lineup included singers clearly influenced by Prince — D’Angelo, Bilal — and diverse admirers, among them Elvis Costello and Bettye LaVette. There were also musicians who had been in Prince’s touring bands, including the saxophonist Eric Leeds, whose group fDeluxe reunites members of a band Prince produced in the 1980s as the Family, and the guitarist Wendy Melvoin, who sat in with the Roots for most of the concert.

At a tribute show, song assignments are nearly as important as the performances themselves, and “Music of Prince” was full of smart choices. Mr. Costello, ever the collector, delivered a Prince song that has only appeared as a bootleg: “Moonbeam Levels,” a yearning, Beatles-tinged rocker. “The Cross,” a song about despair and salvation, was stoked with flamboyant devotion by the Blind Boys of Alabama, a venerable gospel quartet.

Bilal and the Roots turned “Sister” — a punky one-and-a-half-minute ditty about incest from Prince’s “Dirty Mind” album — into an elaborately dramatic mini-suite that kept shifting tempos and genres, sometimes from one line to the next, up to a screeching peak.

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