Interview: Jazz Performer Brian Newman Will Make You Feel Good at Café Carlyle

Trumpeter and jazz singer Brian Newman is a nonstop, energetic performer with a style and repertoire that straddles generations. He performs regularly around New York City and the country, playing with his band and collaborating with artists like Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. Among other projects, he’s had a weekly show at the Flatiron Room since roughly 2017, where he performs a combination of old favorites and new tunes he and the band are testing out in front of a live audience. We spoke about his upcoming show on Monday April 14 at Café Carlyle, his process of developing arrangements to songs, and more. (This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

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What are you looking forward to the most about being back at Café Carlyle this Monday?

That room is just such a hallowed [space]. I'm so honored to be there. I look forward to being in that space and just feeling those vibes of Bobby Short and all those beautiful musicians that have played there over the past [50-plus] years. I love all those vibes.

And then also the hotel. There's so much energy in that whole hotel. It's all over the place and when you're playing in that room, I feel it onstage, and for a kid from Cleveland, playing at the Cafe Carlyle is a dream come true.

How do you feel about the kind of intimacy that you get in a small room like that compared to some of the bigger places you’ve played?

That's my favorite kind of [room]. The big shows are really fun, but I love to be able to see the audience, talk to the audience, bring them into what we're doing. For me, I want to be an entertainer. I'm not trying to [do] fine arts. I want people to feel good and leave there feeling a certain way, like maybe it took them out of their daily lives, the daily struggles that everybody goes through. I love [the] intimacy in that room. Small rooms like that in general are always so much fun for me.

When you do different arrangements to songs, is that something that you come up with yourself, or do you work with an arranger? What's your process with that?

A few guys in the band that I've been playing with a long time... Steve Kortyka, he does a lot of those arrangements, but a lot of them, too, are like, we'll find a song that we like, like “Roxanne” or “Driven to Tears” or something like that, where we know the original, and then we play the original for a couple of shows, and then it kind of morphs into our version of it, our arrangement of it.

And then there's other things too, where I'll say to Steve, “I'm looking for something in this vibe.” And he helps me hip up the melody, the harmonies and then make that arrangement something that's ours. So, it happens both ways, sometimes with just me talking to Steve or talking to the arranger, and then also it happens authentically [where] we find our groove with that particular song.

So much of your patter is connecting with the audience. Do you have a favorite story or memory of a connection like that from a show that you've done?

That's such a good question. I'm trying to think if I have a specific [example.] You were there that night when that when the kid, the trumpet player named Miles was there, which was pretty amazing. But stuff like that happens often.

I remember [at one show] somebody said, “I think I'm your cousin,” and then we found out later that we’re distant cousins on Ancestry.com. But as far as just connecting with the audience, we have a lot of people that come back and see us over and over again.

So sometimes, it's great to see old friends that have been there for years and just connecting with them. And that gives me more ammo, so to speak, on stage, to just really get into people and, like you said, connect with them and, and just have them be part of the show because for me, the audience is more important than [me and] the band, you know what I mean? Without the audience, there's no music at all. What’s that old thing - if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear, did it really happen? [laughs]

Is there anything else that you want to share about either of the shows?

Yeah. I'm super excited. I got some different players this time around, and I'm really excited. Russell Hall, who’s an amazing bass player, this cat Caelan Cardello on piano, Nolan Byrd on drums who you saw at the last show. Russell's a great Juilliard cat. He's like a real life pirate, like, if you look him up, he's from Jamaica, and he's just... He dresses like a pirate, he acts like a pirate, e plays like a pirate, and I love that. And then Caelan Cardello is a beautiful, beautiful piano player. Nolan Byrd, great drummer, and Nicholas Biello on saxophone. So I'm really excited about that. We are going to do a couple new songs that we haven't done before, some new Bruce Springsteen and I think another Tom Waits tune, and just trying out some new stuff that we've been working on. I really want to play the Cafe Carlyle more often. I love being there. I’d play there every night if they let me.

Who would you like to come out to that show?

Oh, man. Anybody that's into authentic old school New York City vibes, in every sense of the phrase. People of all walks of life. I love people, man, human beings. It's about that contact and I would love to just get anybody out there wants to come see the real deal.

Are there any other projects you have coming up or anything you want to plug?

Well, I'm still the musical director at the Pinky Ring for Bruno Mars at the Bellagio in Vegas. So, [I've] got a band there about 15, 16 days a month. when Bruno’s band the Hooligans aren't there. I'm also the musical director of the, of the San Vicente Bungalows at the New Jane Hotel in New York City. So, I'm booking piano players and bass players, duos and DJs in the basement.

One thing for me, I've been doing this a lot in New York, since the Roxy rebranded hotel, I was the musical director there and handled all their programing. And then the jazz club at the Aman, I did all that stuff. I love being able to book great bands and get musicians paid the right wages and treated the right way and now there's four or five places in New York that I built that have that, that have ten bands a week and hundreds of musicians that are making good money doing what they love. And that's super important to me, too, because the more people that are doing it, the better it is for everyone, you know what I mean? I feel like if there's more people playing jazz and playing this great American music, the more places are doing it and you see it, there's all these other places that open up Laredo which constitute reality.

All these other places are doing live music, and that's great for everybody. The more musicians that are working, the more people that are out listening to it. So, it's good for everybody. So that's exciting. I love keeping doing that. And that also allows me to do what I want to do as far as playing the Cafe Carlyle and doing these Saturday nights at the Flatiron Room and traveling. I'm going down to Texas for some shows. We got some other shows... We did just play Philly last weekend. So I'm trying to branch out a little bit more and get out to see some other cities in the United States and, and, hopefully that'll lead to more things. And I'm always just happy to be playing.

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Read a review of Brian Newman’s recent Carlyle show here.

Learn more about Brian Newman on his website and find his upcoming tour schedule here.

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