Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Stride
Every Which Way He Can, Jeff Barnhart Connects the Trad-To-Modern Dots
Trad jazz piano master Jeff Barnhart is a “student of life” who can help you connect the dots from Jelly Roll Morton to Mick Jagger, whether you are an A-List musician or tone deaf adult learner. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Barnhart)
Holding a conversation with Jeff Barnhart is like playing improv at 120 beats a minute – an idea emerges, floats about, connects with another, and the flow goes on.
“As soon as you ask me one question, I go down my own rabbit hole, but they’re all connected,” Jeff told 8495Jazz from his Mystic, CT home and office. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts and practitioners of traditional (trad) jazz on the piano, but says the music is actually a pretext for his real mission. That mission is making people see profound human connections around the music we all listen to, no matter what style we prefer, whether he’s on the bandstand or teaching a course on the early history of ragtime, jazz, and the blues at a fabled gilded age resort.
Jeff is indeed a teacher – he graduated from Connecticut College with dual music and English degrees and a master’s in education. The world of trad jazz has always been his real classroom, in which he assiduously studied the masters of the genre and mentored the handful of younger musicians who found themselves drawn to it. One of the ironies of modern jazz pedagogy may very well be that within the schools themselves, the foundations of trad jazz, without which modern popular music itself would not exist in its present form, are often given short shrift.
“In my experience, schools don’t know how to teach it, and don’t have any interest in it, really,” Jeff said. “That’s mainly because professors didn’t ever really learn about it when they were kids, and people gravitate toward what they know.
“There’s no fault with them except when they have closed ears – when some kid shows up who is steeped in Fats Waller or Scott Joplin or early Louis Armstrong or Johnny Dodds, and they are told ‘Don’t play that, that is not what we are here for.’”
Instead, those kindred spirits seek those masters out in the wild, like Jeff, who has formally taught or informally mentored them along the way, and they are not only honoring the music of trad jazz, but also making it their own with modern flourishes.
He mentions two young jazz musicians who either reside right here in the 8495 or make regular appearances in it; pianist Matt DeChamplain, the Wethersfield, CT, native who has built a thriving career with his wife, vocalist Atla, and Canadian-born trumpeter Bria Skonberg, who took the New York jazz scene by storm more than 10 years ago, and who plays upstate New York and New England quite often.
Matt, Jeff said, became an avid student of the stride style of piano as well as a student of modern jazz; “His first solo album was called Stride-Bop, where he was giving you some nice left hand stride and great licks, and also throwing in the advanced harmonies and advanced scales and essentially creating a hybrid,” Jeff said.
Jeff has known Bria since she was 14, one of a cadre of kids from the British Columbia town of Chilliwack, a Canadian nexus for trad jazz. Though there were several real talents in that group, he said, she was the most talented by far, with a dream of going to New York, “and she made the dream a reality.”
Bria, who will appear at the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown, NY and the International Women’s Brass Conference in Hartford in May, has actually been performing in the region quite some time, including Jeff and Joel’s House Party, a fondly remembered Connecticut shore trad jazz staple that ran for several years, hosted by Jeff and the late Joel Schiavone, the New Haven developer (and banjo player) credited with revitalizing the city’s moribund downtown.
“It was probably a bit of nostalgia for her because it brought her back to what she had been doing,” Jeff said of Bria’s mixing it up with trad jazz royalty. “She’s now singing and, kind of like Diana Krall, the instrument seems to be almost taking a back seat to the singing. And in her case both seem to be taking a back seat to her writing. She is a prolific composer synthesizing so many decades of musical history in every one of her songs.”
No better place to learn this history
But Jeff doesn’t only mentor young trad acolytes who have taken the classics and made them their own. He and his wife Anne, a flautist and singer, also teach two courses about the early history of the music at a venue that may be untoppable as a setting for learning about ragtime and early jazz, the Jekyll Island Club Resort on the south Georgia coast. The main grand building served as a private retreat for the wealthiest families in America during the Gilded Age (the plan to create the Federal Reserve was written in that very building in 1910).
No better place to learn the history of trad jazz and ragtime than the Jekyll Island Club Resort, a Gilded Age splendor (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, by Farrargirl, photo cropped to fit)
They teach under the auspices of Road Scholar, formerly known as Elderhostel, which draws an overwhelmingly well-educated clientele of people, usually over the age of 50. They teach two courses several times each year; one course is on ragtime, Tin Pan Alley jazz and the blues. The other is on silent film comedy and music. Though it varies class by class, he said, there is often a mix of those who either play music or know how to read it, and those who don’t.
“We both have education degrees and we try to reach everybody, from people with advanced musical knowledge to somebody who says they are tone-deaf. We run in the middle of the road in that sense,” Jeff said.
“We go through the form of the average Tin Pan Alley song from 1924 and beyond, through rock – the AABA 32-bar song, we talk about that. We demonstrate that with a simple song like ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’ – something so obvious they get it.
“Sometimes we’ll have very advanced musicians show up, performing musicians. Usually they play in pop or rock genres and want to learn more about stuff they don’t know so much about. And they see the connection. That’s what we’re all about. The overall message is that everything is connected – and we try to connect the dots for people.”
Those connections go far beyond the notes on a page of music, too, and Jeff is working on bringing to life a class on the flip side of the Low Country opulence of the Jekyll Club. Less than four miles from where the nation’s wealthiest families lounged in splendor, local Black entrepreneurs created one of the key stops along the “Chitlin’ Circuit” at St. Andrews Beach, the first spot on the Georgia coast that allowed Black citizens access to the ocean.
Jeff said he and Anne introduce the history of racial inequity in the music industry in the course without dwelling on it. In some ways, he said, the fact that so many members of the generations that heard performers like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong live have died – the youngest of those who would remember seeing Satch sing “Helly Dolly” are in their mid-to late-60s now – means the rigor of history can replace the blurry edges of nostalgia.
He takes pride in the fact that many of their students without a musical background, often the wives of men who are avid jazz scholars, walk away from the class with a much deeper knowledge of the music, the history around it, and their spouse’s passion for it.
“The word that comes up quite often is transformative,’ he said. “My music and the knowledge I try to share is simply a tool towards connection and communication and toward transformation for everyone involved in the event. That’s what it’s about. We are all students of life and we all have so much to teach.”
Canadian-born, New York-based trumpeter Bria Skonberg joined Jeff Barnhart (on piano) and other trad jazz luminaries at a 2012 edition of Jeff and Joel’s House Party in Guilford, CT
Out and About with 8495Jazz
Ticket prices quoted mention service fees as included or as additional; if fees are not mentioned, there are none to our knowledge. Because fees differ according to ticket type, service fee amounts are not included here but are available on venue web sites.
These listings are a curated sampling of shows in the region. As an independent resource for jazz news, 8495Jazz does not receive any consideration, free tickets, or affiliate fees for these listings. Please confirm events are still happening directly with the venue.
8495Jazz Need More Trad? Gig
Cafe Nine, New Haven, CT
TJ Thompson, Tuesday, 7 pm. Free. Jam session after featured set.
If your appetite for trad jazz has been whetted by reading about Jeff Barnhart, the New Haven Jazz Underground jam Tuesday night features TJ Thompson and his trad band. They just played to a packed house at Taft School for a Connecticut Mardi Gras soiree. TJ’s merry band includes Sarah Uyar on trumpet, Jamie Berlyn on clarinet and baritone sax, Nathan Davis on trombone, Charlie Mann on tuba, and James Allen on drums
8495Jazz Wild Card Gig of the Week
Cafe Nine, New Haven, CT
Elm City Big Band, today, 4 pm. $10, all ages.
The Elm City Big band is a 17 piece jazz group comprised of some of Connecticut’s top jazz musicians and music educators. Elm City’s music includes instrumentals and vocal selections from up beat and danceable classics from across the entire era of jazz to the modern day. The band also features tap dancers and jitter buggers side by side with deep swinging and funky grooves.
8495Jazz Now For Something Completely Different
Clarice Buckman Center, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT
Butter Chicken (six-piece acoustic ensemble that fuses the baraat tradition of Southeast Asia with modern jazz, funk, and improvised music influences), Thursday, March 27, 7:30 pm. $10.
8495Jazz Spur Of The Moment Gig TODAY
Pump House Music Works, S. Kingstown, RI
Steve DeConti Quartet (guitar, vocals, combo), 7 pm. $23.18 including service fee, all ages.
Other Shows This Week
VFW Post 399, Westport, CT
John Basile (guitar, combo), Thursday, March 27, 7:30 and 8:45 pm. 7:30 show $20.76 adult, $15.76 students, 8:45 show $10.76.
Western Conn. State University, Danbury, CT
Student jazz combos, Friday, March 28, 7 pm. $10.
Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT
Charlie Ballantine Trio (guitar, combo), Friday, March 28. 8:30 pm ($20) and 10 pm ($15).
Uncle Cheef, Brewster, NY
Rodney Jones (guitar, combo), Friday, March 28. 7:30 and 9 pm. $25 plus service fee. One ticket good for both sets, seating for 9 pm set based on availability. $25 food/beverage minimum per person per set.
Blackeyed Sally’s, Hartford, CT
Haneef Nelson’s Jazz Series, UConn Jazz faculty and students, Thursday, March 27, 7 pm. Free.
The Side Door, Old Lyme, CT
The Hall Monitors, Friday, March 28, GA $49.16 including service fee, students $22.68 including service fee.
Social Bar & Kitchen, New London, CT
New London Big Band, Wednesday, March 26, 6:30 pm. $17.85 including service fee.
Jams
Cafe Nine, New Haven CT
New Haven Jazz Underground jam, usually 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month: free admission
Saturday jazz jam most Saturdays, 4 pm. Free.
Blackeyed Sally’s, Hartford, CT
Jazz Wednesdays, featured set 7 pm, jam session afterward.
Carmine’s, East Hartford, CT
Paisley’s All Star Memorial Jam, 3rd Tuesday of the month, 7:30 pm. House band set followed by jam. Free.
Jazz Societies and Organizations (great info on events, festivals, and more)
Jazz Society of Fairfield County
Jazz Fridays at Three Sheets New Haven 1st/3rd Fridays from 6-9pm
Jazz Thursdays at The Cannon New Haven every other Thurs from 7-9pm.
8495Jazz takes its name from the two Interstate highways that cross our region, I-84 and I-95. Within short driving distances from either, you can find incredible entertainment, from local jams to world-famous festivals in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. 8495Jazz: From Newburgh to Newport!
You can help make 8495Jazz better. Subscribe – it’s FREE! Share it with your music-loving friends. Like and follow us on Facebook and Bluesky. Share gig information and story suggestions to 8495jazz@gmail.com