Wait, You Didn’t Know Jeff Goldblum Had A Jazz Band? Meet The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra

Far from being just that actor from Jurassic Park and Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum is also a jazz pianist who's about to make his big New York debut. Along with his band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, Goldblum will be playing a string of dates this September at New York’s Cafe Carlyle. But did we miss something, since when has Jeff Goldblum also been an in-demand jazz musician?

We assume all celebrities have hobbies, but it seems Jeff Goldblum’s passion for piano playing has actually turned into something more like a second career. Having taken piano lessons as a child, Goldblum occasionally played piano in cocktail lounges as a teen before finding work as an actor. However in the late 90s he began making sporadic appearances across LA, after getting a band together with good friend John Mastro. Soon Jeff and his fellow musicians went from begin known as ‘Jeff Goldblum’s jazz band’ to the less imposing but more confusing, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.

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As puzzling as the name is, the band were actually named after a family friend from Goldblum’s childhood growing up in Pittsburg. In 2000, when the real Mildred Snitzer found out about the band the then 92 year old wrote to the LA restaurant were they frequently played and asked for a cassette so she could 'know how she sounds'. Hopefully she was suitably impressed by Jeff's other talent.

Over the past decade, the band have performed an improvised three hour show at LA club Rockwell nearly every week. Of course acting still comes first for Jeff, but when he's not busy the Rockwell club is where you can find him every Wednesday evening.

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As Time Out asks, “Is there a better way to spend your Wednesday evening than listening to Jeff Goldblum play jazz piano, make small talk and stump the crowd with the movie game?” Probably not and as it usually costs just $15 to hear Jeff and his band play it's also ridiculously good value for money.

Next, what is 'the movie game'?

At a typical show you can expect to hear jazz standards such as ‘Summertime’, ‘The Sidewinder’ and ‘Watermelon Man’, but the actor also throws in a few more surprising renditions. He's even been known to include a jazzed up version of the Jurassic Park theme where he adds the lyrics, ‘In Jurassic Park, Scary in the dark, I’m so scared that I'll be eaten’.

Then there’s ‘the movie game’ which Goldblum frequently plays with audiences. It begins with Jeff naming a movie, then the audience must name an actor in that movie, then he names another actor and another movie, and so it goes on. The trick for the audience usually is to get Jeff to name himself.

If you want to catch the band in New York, Jeff and The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra make their big Apple debut at Cafe Carlyle on September 16th and will stay on until the 20th. Once Jeff is finished the Cafe will then play host to Rita Wilson from September 24th to October 4th, then it's the turn of Brat Pack star Molly Ringwald.