Dave Finch

Tom Grant has been around for a while. You can tell by the way he frames his relationship with Bend musician Dave Finch.

“I haven’t known him a long time … I think, maybe, 20 years?” Grant said in a recent telephone interview. “But that’s a pretty long time, isn’t it?”

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and Grant — talented pianist, celebrated songwriter, smooth jazz pioneer and Oregon music legend — has been doing exactly that since the early 1970s. He has played with jazz giants like Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson and Tony Williams; recorded albums that deftly explore the blurry zones between jazz, pop, R&B and new age music; and lent his time and talent to a number of charities over the past three decades.

This weekend, he’ll come to Bend to play a benefit for Finch, who is fighting cancer (see “If you go”). The two got to know each other over the years as Grant visited Central Oregon to perform, and Finch — a fan of Grant’s — supplied an electric piano. Both are gregarious guys, and a friendship was born.

“He’s a fellow musician and a good guy,” Grant said. “I’m more than happy to try to help him out through such an awful thing.”

Finch was diagnosed in late August and has been going through radiation and chemo since. He has been playing gigs in Bend for many years, both as a solo artist and with bands like the Two/Thirds Trio and Sweet Red & The Hot Rod Billies, and he has long been a friendly and familiar face on the Bend music scene.

Like Finch, Grant was once a working man who played music on the side. He spent a couple of years teaching social studies to high school students in Mill City in the early 1970s before Ron Steen — another major figure in Portland jazz — convinced him to come to the big city and pursue a career in music, Grant said.

“It sounds dramatic,” he said, “but I really credit Ron with saving my life, in a way.”

Grant was born into a musical family, but both his parents died when he was young, and when it came time to choose a post-college path, he decided to honor them by becoming a teacher.

“They didn’t want me to be a musician, and my mom always thought I would be a good teacher,” he said. “I think it was part of my grieving process to go and teach. And then, you know, after a couple of years, I snapped out of it and went to Portland.”

Fast forward more than four decades, and Grant has attracted quite a following over the years.

These days, he said, his audience is starting to look like him: older and wiser, with a bit more gray hair.

Not that Grant is slowing down, mind you. He is starting to conceptualize his next album (with no release date in mind, to be clear), and his most recent release, “Blue Sapphire,” is a 15-track collection of lovely, vibrant songs that hover effortlessly near the intersection of new age and jazz.

That’s right where Grant likes to be.

“New age and jazz, they both come from the same place for me, and they both take the same kind of energy,” he said. “It’s mostly just that I like to find pretty melodies.”

What: Tom Grant benefit concert for Dave Finch

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Unity Community of Central Oregon, 63645 Scenic Drive, Bend

Cost: $25 (in person), $20 (livestream)

Contact: tomgrant.com