PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

For Jeff Goldblum, the multi-hyphenate performer and artist, playing the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts is a homecoming in more ways than one.

Goldblum, a native of the tiny Whitaker borough along the Monongahela River, is returning to his hometown this Saturday night for a concert with his jazz ensemble, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. But he’s also returning to the place where he learned to play the piano — and thought he might just make a living at it.

“My Dad said, ‘Find something you love to do, and maybe that’s a compass for your career choice,’” Goldblum says. “I fell in love with piano and even got a couple of jobs in Pittsburgh before I left.”

He says his first jazz teacher, Frank Cunimondo, plans to attend Saturday night’s concert, which will also feature musicians John Storie, Alex Frank, Joe Bagg, James King, Scott Gilman and Ryan Shaw; award-winning singer (and Postmodern Jukebox veteran) Tawanda will serve as the night’s featured vocalist.

Goldblum, who spoke with Pittsburgh Magazine last week, certainly has all the right influences. He’s thrilled to talk jazz, especially favorites like Miles Davis — whose “particular kind of melancholy, sexy feel is unique” — and Thelonious Monk, whose music has “something unexpected and virile about it … I’ve been drawn to that in some acting I’ve aspired to.”

And while many songs on the three albums by Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra do have a touch of that cool, late-night style (listen to their cover of “The Thrill Is Gone,” featuring Miley Cyrus), Goldblum is equally drawn to more upbeat tunes. “A bunch of our songs have joyful spontaneity to them,” he says.

While Goldblum’s previous local concert appearance was at the Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall, Saturday won’t be his first time on stage at the Benedum Center. In 2004, he made an unlikely appearance in “The Music Man,” playing huckster salesman Harold Hill in a Pittsburgh CLO production. That appearance, he says, was designed to “get some raw material from which to fashion this ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’-like movie,” later released under the title “Pittsburgh.”

“We mashed the two things up and made this experimental comedy that I got a kick out of.”

Of course, he also stopped by the storied theater a few times in his youth — when it was the Stanley Theatre, primarily a movie palace. He says he recently made a list of 70 or so movies he knows he saw in a movie theater between the ages of 4 and 17 — some of which he would’ve seen at the Stanley. “I can’t wait to get back there and breathe the air.”

As Goldblum’s musical career has grown — he says a fourth album is due out soon — his acting work hasn’t diminished. A role as no less than Zeus himself is due later this year in the Netflix series “Kaos,” and he’ll play a certain wonderful wizard in the two-part movie musical “Wicked,” the first half of which hits theaters Nov. 27.

“When I saw ‘Wicked’ on stage originally in New York,” he says, “I loved it. I didn’t know what to expect. It had just come out. I was a mess — with many Kleenex.

“It’s mysterious, why anything particularly strikes a chord.”

Plenty of Goldblum’s roles have struck chords in the minds of fans, though none might have had more impact than Dr. Ian Malcolm, the skeptical decrier of the original “Jurassic Park” and certainly the most famous fictional mathematician of all time. Goldblum is happy to reflect on Malcolm’s significance, particularly as a defender of scientific thinking.

“Dad was a doctor in Pittsburgh,” he says. “I’ve developed a strong admiration for scientists and people of factual, evidentiary, scientific aspiration and learning.”

Despite the international gigs and globetrotting movie shoots, he’s excited to return home this weekend; “It’s a glorious city right now,” he says. And to do so for music — in the place where his training began decades ago — is rewarding.

“I am busy doing a lot of things, but this musical life is unexpected and deliciously nutritious.”