Five years ago, when the News first visited with John Henry Goldman, the West Windsor jazz trumpeter was introducing his music to diners at the old Sunny Garden restaurant on Farber Road off Route 1. It was a tentative beginning: Goldman alone on trumpet with a sound system that provided the accompaniment.
These days Goldman presents the real deal. He plays with an assortment of seasoned jazz musicians at a variety of venues, including most recently Labyrinth Books at 122 Nassau Street in Princeton and Tre Piani restaurant in Forrestal Village. This Saturday, July 24, from 7:30 to 11 p.m. Goldman appears at Tre Piani with two “historic jazz elders,” Lisle Atkinson and Richard Wyands, musicians who were part of the professional jazz scene 40 years ago when Goldman, then 17, determined that he, too, could be a professional trumpet player.
“I’ve come from the age of 17, not imagining that I could ever play like these guys, to actually performing with them,” says Goldman. “It’s the full circle of a dream.”
The dream actually began when Goldman was 6, and was at Camp Takajo in Maine, the summer camp that his father ran for many years. Young John Henry (named after both his grandfathers) asked to play the camp bugler’s horn and was hooked. During high school on Long Island his musical career was sidetracked by basketball — he was named captain of his team in his junior year, a rare feat.
But then began an even more complex set of detours. Goldman quit basketball in his senior year and began serious training on the trumpet, studying with jazz band veteran Jimmy Maxwell. By the time he graduated from high school he knew he didn’t want to attend college (even though he was qualified academically), and he was confident he could play trumpet well enough to do so professionally. But, overwhelmed by a need to be perfect and the amazing talent of professionals such as Atkinson and Wyands, Goldman found himself consumed by stage fright.
The teenaged Goldman struck out on his own, doing landscaping and other manual labor and ending up in Warwick, New York. There he discovered the writing of the Russian mystic, George Gurdjieff, whose teachings emphasized, among many other things, the value of physical labor, crafts, music, and group activity. Hoping to put some of that enlightenment into practice, Goldman returned to join his father in running the summer camp (a year-round job) and moved with his parents when they relocated the off-season camp operation to central New Jersey.
By then he was married. He and his wife, Martha, a nurse manager at Capital Health, have two sons, now 30 and 28 and both out on their own. Goldman moved to West Windsor, and his interest in basketball was re-ignited when he was asked to run a community sports program called the Basketball Club. Unlike most kids’ sports programs, the Basketball Club emphasized cooperation over competition: No scores were kept, no standings maintained, and no parents were allowed to coach their children. “Basketball is a game of sharing,” Goldman writes on his website, straightjazz.com. To that end players in the Basketball Club were allowed to pass but not dribble. The only exception was if one dribble would allow a player to attempt a shot. Goldman says that several participants in the club went on to become standouts at WW-P High School.
Playing basketball into his 30s and 40s had one downside: Goldman felt he was physically beat. He signed up for a Pilates exercise program, and the trainer, Anthony Rabara, realized that Goldman’s camp instruction and coaching background would enable him to be a trainer, as well. Goldman joined Rabara at his studio and now continues to teach Pilates at Princeton University.
Meanwhile (crediting his wife with “giving me the freedom to play music” in public), Goldman started to put together his music act. More recently Goldman has stepped up his performance schedule, appearing at various clubs and farmers’ markets, and building up a network of musicians who can also play with him at private parties and corporate functions — “events that will support me as a musician.”
At his house backing up to Little Bear Brook on Alexander Road, Goldman maintains a rigorous practice schedule. “Being a professional trumpet player is like being a professional athlete,” he says. “It’s a form of physical conditioning. One day of missed practice makes a difference.” His goal is not to be a star, but to promote the music he clearly loves and to encourage other musicians.
To use a basketball metaphor, Goldman passes the ball as much as he shoots. Next Wednesday, July 28, his ensemble at Labyrinth Books will include a high school keyboard player. Two Wednesdays ago he invited two players from Princeton High to join him.
“My sister told me something recently that surprised me,” Goldman says. “She said that even greater than my passion for music is my passion to share the music.”
John Henry Goldman, jazz trumpeter, and ensembles. At Tre Piani, Forrestal Village, Saturdays, July 24 and 31, 7:30 to 11 p.m. At Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Wednesday, July 28, 5 to 7:45 p.m. www.straightjazz.com
