Jeff Babko started as a jazz pianist, but since graduating from the Frost School of Music in 1994 he’s taken on a dizzying array of other roles. He’s been the keyboardist and bandleader/music director for "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and a longtime musical/comedy partner on tours with Steve Martin and Martin Short. He’s played on albums with a dazzling variety of artists, from James Taylor to Smokey Robinson to Alejandro Sanz, as well as his own recordings. He’s appeared on soundtracks for a lengthy roster of films ranging from “Encanto” to “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He’s led concert tours with his own groups and toured with the likes of Julio Iglesias.
But during a nonstop day of teaching at the Frost School in early September, Babko never talked about his many successes. Instead, he focused intently on the students, encouraging them to assert themselves, make stronger musical choices and think about the musical story they were telling or how an audience would respond.
“Try it—if it fails, blame me,” he said to four members of the Frost Jazz Orchestra’s rhythm section. When Babko sits down at the piano to demonstrate, his emphatic, dynamic rendition lights up the passage in a whole new way. “It needs to be so hard to the floor.”
The students follow with new energy, and Babko whoops. “That was so confident—it felt like you were having so much fun,” he told them. “That felt great.”
Three-plus decades after graduating, Babko returned to the Frost School’s Studio Music and Jazz department for a weeklong residency, paying forward what the school gave him with the vast artistic and practical insight he’s gained since.
“I can’t imagine my career without having this springboard and this baseline understanding of what to do from the Frost School,” Babko said in an interview in the office of department chair John Daversa, a longtime friend from their native Los Angeles, where they played in a jazz group together for most of the 2000s. “We learned so fast.”
Now Babko was eager to show the current generation of students how to accelerate their own learning. “The knowledge of jazz theory gets no one going,” Babko said. “How do you apply it? Why are we telling this story? Why are we here? Are we being purposeful?”
“Every bar counts. So you don’t want to check out. Because audiences feel it.”
Babko keeps asking those kinds of questions as he zips from one session to another, speaking to students with a combination of precise musical analysis and colloquial feeling. “We mean this—we’re not belting it, but we mean it,” he tells two soloists among eight jazz vocalists in another class.
Squeezing into a corner of a faculty office to listen carefully to the Stamps Jazz Quintet play their original tunes, he alternates praise with suggestions. “Dude, what a beautiful piece,” he tells drummer Jeremy Baum. “But where it launches into that altered chord and resolves, that’s a moment where I feel like you guys can shape it more. The solos are an awesome opportunity to make sure you don’t just coast.”
He departs with encouragement. “You all are writing great stuff, man. You all are swinging. Thank you for sharing.”
Babko said he was wowed by Frost School students’ curiosity and eagerness. “The engagement has been through the roof,” he said. “The questions are so smart and unexpected, both about events in my career and what to do in theirs.”
The son of two public school music teachers, Babko first connected to the Frost School at age 10 through private lessons with an initially reluctant David Roitstein, a jazz program alumnus teaching at California Institute of the Arts, where he now directs the jazz program. “He didn’t want to teach a child,” Babko said. “But he saw something in me.” He studied with Roitstein through high school, when his teacher urged him to go to the Frost School. Here Babko found crucial encouragement with faculty members such as Gary Lindsay. “He knew I was scared, but I felt like he cared,” Babko said; and Steve Rucker. “To me his curriculum was the most contemporary and relevant,” Babko said of the veteran instructor. “I felt like we were driving the class as much as he was.”
Babko bonded with fellow students who became some of his best friends in music, such as guitarist David Metzner and bassist Dan Pinder, both successful film music editors, and longtime Shakira drummer Brendan Buckley. (Babko is drawn to drummers.) Another key Frost School friend was guitarist Dan Warner, who became a legendary studio musician. “Dan was the first upperclassman who said, 'I see what you’re doing, you can hang, let’s go,'” Babko said. “I needed that to be me.”
Being Babko has been an adventure. His adolescent love of comedy and talk show host David Letterman’s interaction with bandleader Paul Shaffer led him to join Jimmy Kimmel’s band. In 1999, Babko’s love of mixing comedy and music led him to join Steve Martin and Martin Short’s music/comedy tours, where he developed a character who spouts endless musical jargon—and met comedy stars such as Eugene Levy and Katherine O’Hara.
One of Babko’s most memorable performances is the rollicking piano that opens “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the hit Lin-Manuel Miranda song from “Encanto.” (It was a favorite with his son and their friends.) Babko says that sense of swing “definitely comes from a Cuban montuno place” he first heard in Miami. He recorded it alone in a studio during the pandemic lockdown. “I was in a complete vacuum, so I couldn’t tell the song was gonna be great,” he said. He didn’t meet Miranda until the “Hamilton” composer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel.
Along the way, Babko has learned to adapt to each project and partner, not just musically but in the way he communicates. He gives his work on the score for the Pamela Adlon series “Better Things” as an example. “She’s a phenomenal force, subversive,” Babko said. “I recognized she does not want a jazz guy. She might feel something when I play a chord, but she doesn’t want to know it’s smart. She wants to feel it.”
He used that experience leading a composition class where he gave students a prompt from an imaginary showrunner. “I told them to find the keywords in his spiel and translate it into music, but don’t tell him about it in musical terms,” Babko said. “They did very well.”
“I love music and the discovery journey,” he said. “I’m still on my journey too. Whatever helps anybody is great. I don’t love the talking part. I love the greater good it provides. Not just to each other but to audiences. The main goal in music is to make people’s day better, or brighter—or different.”
