Acclaimed musician finds special connection with local students
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff writer
To listen to Jeff Coffin talk, you wouldn’t suspect the man is a Grammy-award winning artist, much less the saxophonist for the Dave Matthews Band.
In fact, if you dropped in on his master class with Burlington Area School District woodwind students Tuesday afternoon, you probably would have thought you were listening to a lifelong music teacher.
“Sometimes to listen, you need to be silent,” said Coffin to about 50 students. The saxophonist had asked students for their perceptions on music he had played – and they provided them.
And for a man who has made his life from others listening to his music, he seemed more than content to listen to what others had to say, and to learn from it.
“That’s why I do these clinics, I open them up,” said Coffin, who was making his second appearance in the school district in a year. “I want to hear from them about that.
“I have an ‘ah-ha’ moment every time they ask a question I’ve never heard before.”
Coffin’s open-minded attitude comes from a lifetime love of music – one that almost ended when his friends tried to convince him to play baseball with them instead.
But one of the influential people in Coffin’s life, a grade school band teacher, asked him to stick it out through that year’s Christmas concert.
“And I never looked back,” Coffin said.
Now, the musician plays not only with the acclaimed Dave Matthews Band, but also with the “Mu’tet” – a jazz group comprised of Coffin, Jeff Sipe, Felix Pastorius, Kofi Burbridge, Bill Fanning, Mike Seal and Chris Walters. That group came to BHS and performed last year – and left to mostly rave reviews.
Yet, while Coffin may be acclaimed, he still “bleeds red,” he said, living life and performing from his heart.
“When I play, I feel like I’m coming out of my body,” he said to the group assembled at Karcher Middle School Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s still magic.”
That magic is something he’s trying to instill in other youngsters by performing the clinics that he does. He doesn’t completely understand how he connects with students, but he’s glad that he does.
“I’m a little goofy like they are,” he said. “But their energy terrifies me sometimes. In a good way.
“I like their energy a lot. I love that they’re sort of fascinated by sound – and music.”
Like most music teachers (Coffin has a music education degree from the University of North Texas), Coffin stresses the fundamentals. He wants to see students learn the basics of harmony and articulation, rhythm and time, tone and dynamics – and then worry about what comes next.
Most importantly, though, he asks students to listen, as he did growing up. Coffin talks not only about the music styles he heard on the AM radio as he drove with his parents – styles ranging from Johnny Cash to soul, sometimes back to back – but also to those people in his life who taught him, like his first band teacher.
“He heard something in me,” Coffin explained. “(He) sort of fanned the flames.”
He calls moments like that “spike moments” in his life, times that stand out and truly shape a musician. He knew Tuesday he’d inspired that in a number of students – whether it was those standing in line for autographs when the jazz concert ended, or another who came up and told him, “You’re giving me the greatest adrenaline rush of my life.”
But perhaps most importantly, he wants young musicians to know the dream starts with youngsters like them – and they may or may not evolve into a professional like himself. He hopes that he can “bridge a gap, erase a perceived divide” between himself and student musicians.
“I still have thoughts, dreams, desires like anyone else,” Coffin said. And as a result, he always stresses to students that they do the work.
“I just inspire them,” he added.
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