Jeff Goldblum on his star-stacked new jazz album

It’s been a long week, and you’re ready for a quiet night in. You put on your cozy clothes, hit the dimmer switch in the living room, start cooking, crack a bottle of wine. As dinner simmers on the stove, you consider: What music matches the vibe?

Since this summer, the answer is “Night Blooms,” the latest album from Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. Goldblum, a trained jazz pianist in addition to being an international movie star, co-founded the ensemble more than 30 years ago, and “Night Blooms” is their fourth studio album. Like earlier offerings, it’s a tight, soothing collection mostly composed of tunes from the Great American Songbook, including “We’ll Meet Again,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “Over the Rainbow.” But though some of the songs are heading steadily toward the 100-year mark, in the hands of Goldblum and company, they sound sophisticated rather than stodgy.

The guest stars help keep the music fresh. Goldblum’s “Wicked” costar Cynthia Erivo handles vocals on “We’ll Meet Again,” as does Charlie Puth on “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” Haley Reinhart does a dreamy rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Lover.” Ariana Grande and Scarlet Johansson can also be heard on “Night Blooms,” although our favorite track remains “As Time Goes By,” of “Casablanca” fame, sung by Goldblum himself.

The ensemble is currently on tour and will wrap up their latest jaunt with four shows at the Musical Instrument Museum on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 17 and 18. 

While on a break from the world tour, Goldblum spoke with us about “Night Blooms,” Henry David Thoreau and why he’s still captivated by jazz music.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Phoenix New Times: How is the tour going?
Jeff Goldblum: We’re going around and we’ve expanded to an orchestra show that we’ve done at the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Albert Hall. But we also love doing our sextet shows, which we can’t wait to do back there at our favorite place (the Musical Instrument Museum). 

Now you’ve got Duke Ellington’s piano there. I can’t wait to see that.

I saw an interview where you called “Night Blooms” something like, the thing that we’re most proud of that we’ve done. It’s a great album — I was listening to it yesterday —  but why are you so particularly proud of it?
Well, we just keep evolving. I’m trying to get better every day. I play, as I’m doing today, two hours. … So I play every day for a couple hours at least and work on things. So I’m enjoying my work more and more. And the way we produce these albums is more fun and I think more effective. We do it at this studio, which we’re all very fond of, and I just think we’re getting tighter and better. The guest people who came on this album, the singers, are just fantastic. I think it’s just getting better and better. I’m proud of it. The jazz musicians are the best in the world with whom I play. They’ve been all here for some of these other albums, but this is a great group, so I’m crazy about it.

That’s great. “Night Blooms” has so many wonderful songs from the Great American Songbook, including a couple from “The Wizard of Oz. Is that a nod to your role in “Wicked” or are they just some great songs?
Both. I think they’re great songs. I’ve always loved “Wizard of Oz,” and so some of that Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg stuff, “If I Only Had a Brain,” and of course, “Over the Rainbow,” I’m crazy about, but I do have now some tangential connection at least with that material. So we thought we’d delve into that. Yeah, I love those songs. And we do them live. You’ll hear variations of a couple of things that we do from this album if you show up at the concert. 

I also was surprised to hear the Taylor Swift song on the album. How did that come about? 
Well, we went, my wife and I, Emilie, to SoFi Stadium and saw her Eras Tour with 60,000 people, and it was a delightful time. I exchanged love bracelets with many people, and I was crazy about it. I met her some years ago and she was very nice to me, and I’m a fan. And so our guys, Joe Bagg and Alex Frank and Graham Decker, came up with what we thought was an interesting arrangement, a different kind of twist to that, that we really love doing. And we may be doing that live, a variation of that live when you come and see us.

Do you see yourself incorporating more modern songs into your repertoire?
We kind of take it organically, so to speak, album by album and moment to moment, but possibly so. There’s just a wealth of current stuff that I’ll bet we’d love to build upon and see if we can play with, as well as the whole treasure of the Songbook. But so many things, yes, nowadays — Billie Eilish, and dodie, who we sing with on this, but Olivia Dean is so great and Lady Gaga … we have a dream list of who we’d love to record with.

After so many decades of playing music, you’re still on jazz. What draws you to jazz? What keeps you in jazz?
Well, I like a lot of different kinds of music, but jazz is still … I don’t know, there’s something in my bones that has been turned on by it from the very start, and there still is. It’s so rich. There’s still so much I can learn and hear even for the first time, all sorts of things and people and masters who have come before. And currently it’s being continued and evolving. It’s just delightful and the people I really like are sophisticated and just fantastic. So it just keeps exciting me.

What can people expect at the shows?
Well, like I say, some of these variations of some things that are on the last album and some other special interesting things and more sort of unexpected and surprising talk and stories and games and playing with me, if they are interested in that kind of thing. I like to see who’s there and see anybody who shows up and I get a kick out of that.

At last year’s show, I was surprised at how much you spoke with the crowd. Is that a part of the show that you enjoy?

I really do. It’s almost my favorite part of it. I’m crazy about it. Yeah, let’s see who comes. I’ll bet you’ll know some of the people who are there. It’s a tight-knit and delicious place, isn’t it? It is. I can’t wait. Maybe I’ll see some people who I saw before, and I’m always interested in meeting new people there.

The crowd work feels like a form of improv, and obviously jazz is an improvisational genre of music. Does that translate into your acting? Are you an improvisational actor?
Yes. Oh, funny, you should ask. Yeah, I’m a serious student of craft, and I was lucky enough to study with Sanford Meisner at his height right after I graduated from high school. This was early on in New York City, and the cornerstone of his early training technique is this very particular improvisation that I went on to learn as much as I could about it and then went on to teach in between my acting gigs for 20 years. So improvisation is something very important to me, and I’ve done movies that incorporate all improvisation. I did a movie called “Pittsburgh” and many other things, but then I like to do … I’ve done plays, David Mamet and things where you have to really be precise with the words and make it seem like you’re improvising. So I like that. Wes Anderson, of course, I’ve done four movies with him. He’s also very precise.

And then sometimes you get a chance to do hybrid, a little of this and a little of that. But yes, that all overlaps into jazz and the approach there. … I keep exploring things and studying things, not just winging it. So then you’re free to get there and listen, have a conversation with the other musicians and like that.

Yeah, some people come to our shows who are kind of new to jazz in some ways. So sometimes I like to tell them that we’re going to play the tune, the melodies of these songs, and then in accordance with the chord structure, we’re going to take turns soloing, which involves improvising or making up new melodies along with the chords determined by that artist’s particular biorhythmical emotional condition at that moment and what we feel about the audience, because every audience is unique and gives off vibrations and many messages, and we want our newly invented musical stories to land on your particular ears.

And then we have this conversation, like I say, amongst each other where a soloist may go, “I heard what you said, so I’m going to echo, mirror and repeat that maybe, and you too, and it makes me think of something else that I can invent right now.” And so it’s kind of like that. It’s very kind of a present and on-the-spot little adventure.

Do you listen exclusively to jazz? What are you listening to lately?
I listen to all kinds of things. This morning, Emilie and I were having breakfast. Quincy Jones and James Ingram do this song called “100 Ways.” I’ll bet you know it — that I like a lot, R&B. So I listen to R&B a lot. “You Never Can Tell.” You know that song from “Pulp Fiction”? I just came upon a YouTube version of two women, it kind of looked like a do-it-yourself version, but they were very good. So I’m always surprised, and I like to be surprised and come upon things like that. A little bit of country here and there. Emmylou Harris, I came upon recently. Well, I saw that movie because I keep watching movies all the time. “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?” I had just seen “The Odyssey” and I wanted to see things that are taken from that same story. And the Coen brothers did this movie with some singing in it, some country singing, gospel singing that I really liked.

John Williams, of course, and Bernard Hermann do scores to movies that I love. Max Richter, “On the Nature of Daylight,” I listen to a lot, which was part of this “Hamnet” movie and “Arrival” before that. And Ennio Morricone, I saw a documentary on him, and as you know, he’s done some scores that I just love. It’s not exactly jazz. And then I went to New York and we saw four Broadway shows last week. We saw “Ragtime,” which I was crazy about. That’s not exactly jazz, but boy, that just killed me, and the performance of that. Also, “Schmigadoon!” we saw, which was very sophisticated, delightful, well done — I thought a version of a parody of many musicals, classical musicals, that was just great. It was hilarious and got to me in a big way, too. It was very touching and romantic. So all sorts of things.

That’s wonderful. And that other acting thing that you do, what’s going on lately?
Hey, let’s see. Well, I did, speaking of Ken Burns, who I was thinking about when we were talking about country music, because I like that whole documentary that he did, not only the jazz one, but the country music. We did something that recently, I did a voice for a documentary that he did on Henry David Thoreau, I’ll bet you know, the guy from Walden Pond, and this was a more thorough education than I’d ever gotten about him. And I did his voice in this show. Meryl Streep did a couple of voices and George Clooney did some voices, so that’s watchable. I just read a script yesterday. I’m looking for special things now, being busy with music and being busy with our family. Our boys are now 9 and 11. I want to give equal balanced time and attention and energy to all parts of my too-lucky life.

 Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 17 and 18. MIM Music Theater, 4725 E. Mayo Blvd. Tickets are $175.50 to $225.50. Visit mim.org.