Jazzman, tense during openers, played with gong (5,8)

'jazzman' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether it can be defined by this definition.

'tense during openers played with gong' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'tense' could be 't' (abbreviation used in many dictionaries) and 't' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'openers' is 'peerson' which is located in the remaining letters.
'gong' could be 'oscar' (an Oscar is a type of gong or award) and 'oscar' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?