Decades ago, a young man named Chris Potter, who had moved recently from Chicago, Ill. to Columbia, heard a sound that changed his life. The boy, no more than ten years old or so, was a fan of rock music more than anything else, and typically thought that a saxophone solo was a perfectly good place in a song to play another guitar lick.

But one day, he heard Paul Desmond, the lyrical alto sax player for the legendary jazz outfit The Dave Brubeck Quartet, and that, as they say, was all she wrote.

Potter wore his parents down and got a saxophone, started taking lessons from local instructor Bryson Borgstedt, and began gigging around town at the ripe old age of 13. At 18, Potter left S.C. to follow his dreams in New York, launching a remarkable five-decade career as prolific bandleader and a skilled, first-call sideman.

This Saturday, Potter returns to his roots with a performance at the Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College. Backed by the 18-piece group known as the S.C. Jazz Masterworks Ensemble, Potter leads a program called “Saxophone Colossus,” an evening of classic standards and originals from his dozens of albums, backed by a powerful, high-energy big band.

And they’ll have plenty of material to choose from. Since his debut as a leader with 1993’s “Presenting Chris Potter,” the saxophonist has seemingly gone from strength to strength.

As a player who can move between acoustic jazz and electric fusion style playing, Potter is quite versatile, and his albums range from genre-pushing collaborations with pianist Brad Mehldau (the just-released “Eagle’s Point”) to straight-ahead post-bop work (“Concentric Circles,” recorded with an acoustic quartet) to cutting-edge work that mixes jazz and sampling technology (“The Dreamer Is The Dream”).

Potter has received critical acclaim from the prestigious jazz publication, Down Beat, as well as the New York Times and Slate. And to top it all off, he’s a Grammy-award-nominee, as well.

Even if you haven’t heard any of those albums, the chances are still pretty good that if you’re a jazz music fan, you’ve heard Chris Potter’s saxophone somewhere. His list of sideman dates is stunning. He’s played with magical names like Paul Motian, Red Rodney, Dave Holland, Pat Metheny, the Charles Mingus Big Band, John Patitucci and Wayne Shorter. Heck, he’s even guested on two Steely Dan albums.

On his website, Potter talks about the people he’s worked with over the years and how important they were to his success as a leader.

“I’ve had the chance to learn a lot from all the leaders that I’ve worked with,” he wrote. “Each gave me another perspective on how to organize a band and make a statement. It’s taught me that any approach can work, as long as you have a strong vision of what you want to do.”

Hard to think of a better artistic credo for a man who’ll be hailed as a “Saxophone Colossus” this Saturday in a place that helped shape him.