Musicians came all the way from Japan to perform at this weekend's celebration of the birth of one of the founding fathers of jazz -- Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.

Among them was 63-year-old trumpet player Yoshio Toyama, who was 20 when he met and performed with Armstrong in Tokyo in 1964.

"I love Louis Armstrong," said Toyama, a small man who belted out some of Armstrong's biggest hits -- including "What a Wonderful World" -- at an outdoor birthday party Friday in Armstrong Park.

"I'm very proud to be here to play for him," said Toyama, standing next to a large bronze statue of the jazz king born in New Orleans more than a century ago.

The party, complete with a large cake and ice cream, kicked off a weekend of music touted as Satchmo Summerfest. Through Sunday, musical events and seminars will be held at the Old U.S. Mint and other French Quarter locales.

Among Saturday's performers are the Storyville Stompers and the Louis Armstrong Society jazz band, featuring Charmaine Neville. Also Saturday, the Treme brass band planned a children's workshop, where kids bring their instruments on stage and perform with the band.

On Sunday, Rebirth brass band performs, along with Trombone Shorty and his Orleans Avenue band and Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Swingers. Neville and others are holding a "Props for Pops" session that will include songs by and about Armstrong, whose many nicknames included "Pops."

"Louis Armstrong is such an ambassador for this city, even though he's not here anymore," said Chuck Morse, the assistant secretary of the Louisiana Office of Tourism, who attended Friday's party. "Celebrating him is a celebration of our culture."

Friday's party was followed by a red beans and rice luncheon at a downtown New Orleans hotel and seminars about Armstrong.

Other weekend events include a jazz Mass Sunday at St. Augustine Church, one of the nation's oldest historically black Catholic churches, followed by a second-line parade -- a traditional New Orleans foot parade where watchers often fall in to form a second line of paraders.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the festival attracted as many as 50,000 attendees, but that number was cut in half to 25,000 last year -- the first post-Katrina Satchmo Summerfest, said Kathleen Alter, the festival's director.

The first Satchmo Summerfest was held in 2001 to honor what would have been Armstrong's 100th birthday. Though there's dispute over the exact date of the jazz man's birth, festival organizers recognize it on Aug. 4, 1901.

By the time of Armstrong's death in 1971, he was widely recognized as a founding father of jazz.

On the Net: Satchmo Summerfest, http://www.fqfi.org

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)