There are magical moments in music. Moments when beats, rhythms and souls connect. Moments when artists give and adoring audiences receive. Jeff Coffin calls them “peak esthetic, almost holy moments where everything is at once connected.”
Coffin, 2024 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Dave Matthews Band, Grammy winner, composer and Vanderbilt jazz saxophone instructor, wants to pull you into a place where tunes from his saxophone become conduits to these authentic emotions.
“I want you to feel what we’re feeling on stage, and I want to feel what you’re feeling as an audience member, where there’s no disconnect and we are breathing and moving together,” he said. “It’s rare and it’s everything.”
Coffin has been bringing these magical moments to life with Dave Matthews Band since 2008. Before that he spent 13 years jamming with jazz fusion ensemble Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, earning three Grammy awards.
He’s also a prolific writer and producer, releasing 23 albums so far, most recently a musically diverse jazz album with a West African vibe titled Only the Horizon.
“I knew early on that music would be my career—that I wanted to live a creative life—because music, the vibration, the emotional content, made me feel and still makes me feel something that nothing else does,” he said.
MAKING MUSIC MATTER
The jazz rocker has been working for decades to help make people’s relationship with music matter. It’s one of the reasons he juggles the duality of what he calls “road life” and “home life.”
Home life consists of being with his “partner in life and love,” his wife, Ryoko. They met almost two decades ago when she was leading a yoga class for members of Dave Matthews Band.
“She’s the happiest person I’ve ever known. She brings out the highest part of everyone around her when she is around them, and it’s kind of inexplicable but it’s very real. People like me but they love her,” Coffin said, laughing.
Home life is also teaching at the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music for a decade now, leading music clinics in Nashville and across the globe, recording new artists through his own label Ear Up Records, and co-founding multicultural music collectives like AfricaNashville, who are highlighted on Coffin’s latest album.
“One of the reasons I started my label was to offer something to lift others up. ‘Hey, man, let me help you get this music out and see where it goes,’” he said. “To me, it’s about community and playing with authenticity. It doesn’t matter who or how many people I’m playing for or playing with, I’m going to play with heart.”
TEACHER AT HEART
Even with the time he spends on the road and in the studio, Coffin focuses a great deal of his energy teaching and mentoring.
“His dual life works because Jeff loves to teach,” said Ryan Middagh, area coordinator for jazz and global music, director of the jazz program at Blair and a regular collaborator with Coffin. “At the point when we hired him at Blair, Jeff had already led 300-plus clinics and master classes ranging from middle school students to college students. He loves to teach. And he has the heart of a teacher, which not everyone has.”
Coffin teaches students the technical side of playing, along with essential keys to success like working through conflict, managing ego, and playing with both head and heart.
“I’m trying to get them to understand the complexity of their own feelings, rather than just playing through,” he said. “It’s through that authenticity of the emotion that the magic happens. And that’s hard!”
Coffin admits he’s had to work through these issues himself, which makes him a wise teacher.
“Jeff is a wild and funny guy, but as a teacher, he is very thoughtful and intense. It makes for a very nice balance between the fun moments, especially in group settings, and the more serious one-on-one engagements,” said Nate Spratford, jazz studies major in the Class of 2027. “Studying with Jeff is a lot like having a guide holding me accountable and helping shape my path.”
The relationships Coffin builds with students last far beyond Commencement day.
“Jeff embodies musical inspiration. From my time as a student of his to now working with him professionally, I’ve only ever known him to be voraciously creative,” said David Rodgers, BMus’17, current artistic director of Nashville Jazz Workshop.
“He’s always working on something new; he’s always checking out new music; he’s always looking for ways to involve the local and greater musical community in his creative pursuits,” Rodgers said. “But ultimately, it’s been his drive to include others that has made the biggest impact on me—as an educator, performer, composer, author and human being.”
EARLY VIBES
As a high-energy kid growing up in small-town Maine, his first musical memories are of bouncing on the seats of his parents’ car, listening to classic rock on the radio.
Coffin followed his older sister, Lori, into school band. She played the flute; the outgoing 10-year-old had his sights on percussion.
But fate—and his first band director, Arthur Lagassee—had different plans. That’s when he first picked up an alto sax and the trajectory of his life changed forever.
“I’ve always wanted to be able to sing. The sax became the ‘voice’ I always wanted,” he said.
Lagassee saw his talent and invited Coffin to play weekend gigs in a jazz trio the summer after seventh grade.
“We’d do weddings, parties, Elks Lodges, anything. My teacher had a huge repertoire for me to learn. And since I was the newest in the group, I’d sit in the back of the truck holding down all the gear,” Jeff said, laughing.
The Coffin family moved from Maine to New Hampshire when Jeff started high school.
“I went to music camp at the University of New Hampshire for three summers, and it changed everything for me,” Coffin said. “I found my tribe and the direction of my life.”
He’s still friends with some of the musicians he met at those camps.
BEING PREPARED TO SAY ‘YES’
Coffin studied music education at the University of North Texas and practiced voraciously, preparing to play songs in all 12 keys, in case he was asked to improvise.
After graduation he moved to Nashville and jumped into the jazz scene. That’s where he met Béla Fleck, who invited him to play with the Flecktones starting in 1997.
The Flecktones were an opening act for the Dave Matthews Band over the years, and the two groups built a strong respect for each other. In 2008, Coffin stepped in for DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who had been injured in an ATV accident. When Moore died suddenly from complications stemming from the accident, Béla Fleck encouraged Coffin to move ahead with Matthews.
“LeRoi’s sound is an integral part of the ensemble, so there are some songs where I play in homage to him,” Coffin said. “And over the years I’ve added my own sound.”
HALL OF FAME
Coffin was in Florence, Italy, with his bandmate, trumpet player Rashawn Ross, when they heard the exciting news about being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“It was very emotional,” Coffin said. “And I was glad I was with Rashawn because he’s the person I spend the most time with; we stand next to each other on stage.”
As part of honoring so many people who have walked alongside him, Coffin is donating a very special saxophone for an exhibit.
“I have an instrument being engraved for the Rock Hall with a bunch of my family’s names on there. I have the Japanese kanji for music, since my wife is Japanese. I’ve got the initials of my first band director on there. I have a cosmic hippo from the Flecktones. And I’ve asked Dave to draw something in honor of LeRoi that will also go on the horn,” Coffin said. “These things on there are a deep part of who I am.”
GROUNDED ROCKER
Coffin laughed when asked if he thinks of himself as a rock star. He instead shared his gratitude for a deeply creative life filled with love and support.
“I love my family so much, and I thank them for accepting the sacrifices of what I have chosen to do in life. I don’t think it’s been the easiest road sometimes for them, but I do feel their love and I am eternally grateful,” he said. “They are in every note I play and in every beat of my heart.”
Story by Amy Wolf, Video by Randolph Infinger
- Listen to Jeff Coffin’s latest music on his YouTube channel
- Learn more about Vanderbilt Blair School of Music
- Attend a concert at Blair
