Benny Green pays tribute to piano great Oscar Peterson at Jazz Port Townsend

After the death of the great jazz-piano player Oscar Peterson, his protégé Benny Green was asked frequently to perform shows that were to be billed as tributes to his late mentor. Each offer was graciously extended, and Green graciously turned them down.

"I didn't want to jump on any opportunistic bandwagon in the aftermath of his passing," said Green. "There were many situations that I turned down, that paid well, much to my manager's frustration ... out of respect for Oscar as a friend as well as an artist."

Time passed — Peterson died in December 2007 — and eventually the right person asked Green again. And this time, Green agreed. This weekend, he will play a very personal concert as part of Jazz Port Townsend, the three-day festival with shows in Fort Worden State Park and in various clubs and restaurants in the sea-swept village of Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.

It was bassist John Clayton, the festival's artistic director, who persuaded Green, whom he has known for 16 years, to finally pay tribute to Peterson's artistic legacy.

"Benny really understood Oscar's playing in a special way," Clayton said. "Benny is the kind of musician who is all or nothing. When he fell in love with Oscar Peterson's music, he didn't just absorb Oscar's licks here and there. He learned everything."

Green, who has been part of the festival lineup for four years in a row, will perform Saturday afternoon in McCurdy Pavilion, the open-air auditorium in the park, the second of three acts. He's playing many of Peterson's original compositions, some of them alone and some with bassist Doug Miller and drummer Alvester Garnett.

"When John asked me, I was hesitant to feel I could even do justice to representing Oscar's emotional scope," said Green, 46, who was part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and bassist Ray Brown's trio. "Even if I haven't always had faith in myself, I have full faith in John's belief in me. He felt this was something I could do a good job with. So I accepted the job with gratitude, knowing the piano will never be played better than it was played by Oscar Peterson."

Jazz Port Townsend started Monday with a series of workshops taught by almost all of the musicians who play in the festival; performances are set to begin Thursday night with shows in two local restaurants. The festival moves into high gear Friday night, with two concerts in McCurdy, and club performances later that night in eight venues. Saturday is the longest day of music, with both afternoon and evening concerts in McCurdy as well as a full club schedule that runs well into the wee hours.

This year's festival will feature plenty of familiar names and musicians who performed last year, among them guitarists Bruce Forman and Dan Balmer, pianists Taylor Eigsti and George Cables, trombonists Wycliffe Gordon and Andre Hayward, trumpeter Terell Stafford, drummers Clarence Acox and Greg Williamson, bassist Chuck Deardorf, and singer Sachal Vasandani.

The 2009 lineup is noticeably young, with more than its usual share of musicians in their 20s. In addition to Eigsti, singer Sara Gazarek, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, drummers Justin Brown and Obed Calvaire, pianist Gerald Clayton (John Clayton's son), guitarist Graham Dechter, vocalist Gretchen Parlato and bassist Joe Sanders are all in their 20s.

"We have a lot of new faces and young energy," said Greg Miller of Centrum, the arts organization that puts on the festival. "We're trying to feature the coming generation."

Hugo Kugiya: hkugiya@yahoo.com