PORT TOWNSEND — Jazz singer Rene Marie has crossed many rivers to reach this time and place.
Like a life raft, her music carried her.
And now Marie is using her voice — her seasoned, multicolored instrument — to show others the way forward.
Marie is just one of the luminaries in the series of Centrum workshops, concerts and club sessions known as Jazz Port Townsend, centered at Fort Worden State Park, 200 Battery Way in Port Townsend.
Born into a family of nine in rural, segregated Virginia, she had some piano lessons and learned to read music as a child. She sang in a band while in high school, composing her first song at 15.
At 18, she was baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness, got married, gave up singing in public and started raising a family.
Her oldest son was the one who convinced her to sing again. In early 1996, she began performing for tips only, at a Ramada Inn one night a week.
Her husband wasn’t happy with this, so Marie kept her job working in a bank.
Then one day, after nearly 24 years of marriage, he issued an ultimatum. Either stop performing or move out.
Marie left on New Year’s Eve 1997, at age 41, and never looked back. Eighteen months later, she had divorced, signed on with the MaxJazz label and recorded her first CD.
Now a resident of Denver, Marie has 10 albums to her credit, including “Serene Renegade,” “How Can I Keep from Singing?” and “Experiment in Truth,” recorded after she departed MaxJazz.
Ask this musician what she wants to give the people in Port Townsend this weekend, and you hear her take a deep breath.
“Oh . . . I want to give them everything,” Marie answers, smoothing out the word like a piece of silk jersey. “Ev-e-ry . . . thing.”
“I believe people — especially in Western culture — we tend to stuff our feelings down,” she said. But when her fellow human beings come to a concert, “they want to be moved.”
So “I want to go past all those layers . . . and touch that place,” that portal of emotion.
Someone in the audience might be bothered, might be disturbed by such raw feelings, she acknowledged. But if that person is moved, perhaps, to call her mother and say “I love you,” call the sister she hasn’t spoken to in a long while or give a little bit of money or food to a homeless person, then those emotions served a purpose.
At 55, Marie is herself living, singing proof of music’s power to transform.
“I thank my ex-husband all the time,” she said. “I am so grateful for the way he encapsulated the whole issue: Either stop singing or move out. There’s nothing like an ultimatum to make things crystal clear.”
Walking away from your old life — a life that you’ve outgrown — may bring suffering for a while, she said. But then you realize that you’re telling the world your truth.
Music lovers have three opportunities to see Marie in action in Port Townsend: She’ll lead a vocal workshop — open to the public — in Building 204 at Fort Worden this afternoon from 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.; she’ll sing at the Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St., tonight from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., and she’ll be part of the big Saturday afternoon concert of straight-ahead jazz at Fort Worden’s 1,200-seat McCurdy Pavilion.
That show also features the All-Star Faculty Band directed by John Clayton and a tribute to Freddie Hubbard featuring trumpeter Terell Stafford and pianist George Cables.
Jazz Port Townsend also brings concerts to the McCurdy Pavilion tonight and Saturday night. First, the Ingrid Jensen Quartet featuring Benny Green, plus the L.A. Organ Trio with organist Larry Goldings will appear at 7:30 this evening.
On Saturday night, another two-part show starts with harmonica player Phil Wiggins in an eight-piece band presenting the “Room for the Blues” concert at 7:30 p.m.; on its heels comes a performance by what organizers call “jazz royalty”: saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Tootie Heath.
“It’s a big coup to have the Heath brothers,” said John MacElwee, executive director of Centrum. And Marie, he added, is also a performer audiences won’t soon forget.
“She brings you in . . . She has this neat thing she does: She puts songs together,” MacElwee said.
For example, he’s seen Marie blend Ravel’s “Bolero” with Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”
“Jazz in the Clubs” provides plenty more music across Port Townsend, with musicians Terrell Stafford, Byron Vannoy and Ellen Rowe sitting in at eight venues ranging from the Undertown and The Upstage to the Rose Theatre and the Northwest Maritime Center.
Those sessions run from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. both tonight and Saturday.
For more information on performers, venues and ticket prices, visit www.centrum.org or phone 800-746-1982.
Tickets will also be available one hour before show time at each venue.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
