Jazz virtuoso Benny Green plays Friday

Jazz legend Benny Green made his name with the Ray Brown Trio, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Freddie Hubbard.

Now you can see the virtuoso in person on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Ichiban Sushi Lounge, which has become one of Spokane’s major jazz hotspots.

Green, from Berkeley, Calif., hit the national jazz scene in 1983, when he was only 20. By the 1990s he had become the leader of his own band.

He made a series of acclaimed Blue Note albums, including “The Place to Be” in 1994 and “Kaleidoscope” in 1997, which put him in the top tier of jazz pianists. He released a new album this month, “Source,” with his own trio.

According to the Music Hound’s “Jazz: The Essential Album Guide,” Green’s characteristic style is “peppered lavishly with rapid-fire runs, interludes of 10-finger block chords, lush romanticism and hard-swinging rhythms that combine elements of gospel, blues and bebop.”

This concert will be one of the culminating events of Spokane’s Jazz Appreciation Month.

And if you happen to be a pianist and want to learn from the master, Green will teach a piano clinic at Gonzaga University’s Music Annex Building, Friday at 4 p.m. Admission is $5, or free with any student ID.