Former “Late Show” saxist Eddie Barbash comes home for show at the Breman

Former Atlantan Eddie Barbash has emerged as one of the most vibrant, dynamic and in-demand alto saxophonists working in modern jazz. 

A founding member of pianist Jon Batiste’s Stay Human, the house band for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Barbash has since amassed a resume that radiates accomplishment: stints with Lenny Kravitz, Wynton Marsalis and Yo-Yo Ma are high points. 

It would be easy for a man of Barbash’s caliber to adorn himself in the laurel wreaths of ego mania, but in conversation he reveals himself to be a charitable purveyor of the quiet cool that one expects from the laid-back masters of the jazz pantheon.

Barbash sat down with ArtsATL in advance of his homecoming concert Thursday with the KASA Quartet at the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, presented in partnership with Neranenah (formerly the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival). The evening will highlight Barbash’s passion for the music enjoyed by the Greatest Generation. His most recent album, For Murray and Lillian, is a tribute to his late grandparents and the music they loved.

ArtsATL: Your recent album For Murray and Lillian is a collaboration with arranger Kyle Athayde. Tell us about that process.

Eddie Barbash: Kyle is a genius. A lot of my favorite music was created collaboratively. When you have the humility to not try to do it all yourself, you end up with something much better than you could make on your own. My favorite example is Motown studios — they would have these incredible arrangers, songwriters, producers and performers all working together to make these really big elaborate, lush productions. Everybody puts their best foot forward, doing the thing that they do best.

I had a lot of experience with this music so we were able to go into the studio and track it all live. We did it in one room to a tape machine called a Tascam 388. It’s a quarter-inch tape machine with only eight tracks. We did eight microphones, all in one room, and fed the audio into digital software and mixed it.

ArtsATL: Take us into your early educational background in Atlanta and how you started playing sax.

Barbash: I went to Atlanta public schools. When I was in the school system, they started you in band in the third grade. You could be in band, choir or handbell choir. I actually was most interested in the handbell choir because of the way the music is put together — each person only has one or two bells, so each person only has one or two notes. I decided that the handbell choir was cool but you really couldn’t do it by yourself. It was a useless skill to learn. I decided that band would make more sense.

By the time I decided to be in band, the two instruments I was most interested in playing — trumpet and drums — were all filled up. I was looking at the posters with all the instruments on the wall and I saw a poster with all the saxophones on it. I thought it looked really crazy. So I decided I was going to play saxophone because it looked really cool and weird. After a few months to a year of being in band the director started to recognize that I had some talent and started giving me little solos to play. The first one I remember was actually “Blueberry Hill,” which I play with my string group.

I was in Atlanta public schools until I finished my sophomore year of high school. Then I moved to North Carolina and went to North Carolina School of the Arts. It’s a college and a high school combined. From there I went to Juilliard for two-and-a-half years and then I transferred to the New School.

ArtsATL: How did you transition that into getting more heavily into jazz? Who are your early influences?

Barbash: I wasn’t really passionate about jazz to begin with. But in the U.S. if you’re good at a horn you get funneled into jazz because the advanced band is always some sort of jazz band. So I started in the fifth grade; I was able to play in the neighboring middle school’s jazz band. That was my introduction to jazz.

I just got deeper and deeper into jazz because that was the direction I was being steered. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I started to figure out what music I really liked. I discovered bluegrass and a lot of the American roots music stuff and the pop jazz singers of the 40s — the Bing Crosbys and the Jo Staffords. That kind of stuff. And learning about earlier styles of jazz like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Carter. I realized that all of that resonated with me a lot more than bebop and hard bop.

ArtsATL: You got your big break as a member of Stay Human with John Batiste and appeared with the band on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Tell us about that and why you ultimately moved on.

Barbash: My first gig when I got to New York was with Jon Batiste. I met him at Julliard. He started calling me for gigs pretty early on. The people he was playing with were so much more experienced than me, and I felt lucky just to be tagging along. We had a long journey — ten years of playing together — which culminated in us getting hired to be the band for the Late Show.

It was an amazing experience, but it was so time-consuming and it wasn’t that artistically fulfilling. I wasn’t making music that I felt good about. So I quit after a year-and-a-half and transitioned into playing with a lot of other bands. I’m really glad I did because now I get to do a lot of cool stuff, touring and playing with all these different people I never would have if I’d just stayed on that gig.

ArtsATL: Your show at the Breman Museum is a homecoming of sorts. What makes it significant for you?

Barbash: Atlanta is where I spent my formative years — almost my entire childhood — and I really haven’t been back very many times. I’ve been there to play a few times with other artists but never to do my own thing. So that’s really exciting and to have all these people from my childhood that I know are going to be there. Teachers who are really important to me are going to be able to hear me do what I do best.

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer. He is currently the lead guitarist for the jazz group Other Strangers, the power metal band Axis of Empires and the melodic death/thrash metal band Century Spawn.