When Jacob Schwartzberg stepped on stage at The Phoenix jazz club wearing a well-cut suit and black yarmulke, his gleaming saxophone in hand, the 25-year-old looked as cool and self-assured as any jazz musician in Kansas City, Missouri.
When the sound of Schwartzberg’s saxophone filled the crowded jazz club, something else about the observant Jewish musician became clear: He ranks among the finest young jazz saxophonists in a city brimming with musical talent.
Schwartzberg spoke humbly about his abilities, yet played skillfully alongside his bandmates in Alex Abramovitz and His Swing'n Kansas City Jazz Band — one of the Kansas City Pitch’s Best of KC 2024 finalists — at their Nov. 23 show at The Phoenix. Some of the biggest KC jazz devotees in attendance said they were impressed.
“I’ve never thought about it like this, but I couldn’t tell you anybody else that looks like me, doing what I do [in Greater Kansas City],” Schwartzberg told The Chronicle between sets.
Schwartzberg is the rarest of sights in the city’s jazz scene: a kippah-wearing Jew who proudly displays his identity both on stage and off. At a time when Jewish representation in the arts sometimes attracts antisemitic protests, the saxophonist is boosting Jewish visibility while wowing discerning jazz audiences across the metro.
“You never know what’s going to happen, right? One person sees you and has an issue, and that’s that,” Schwartzberg, who attends services at Congregation Beth Shalom, said of antisemitism since Oct. 7. “Or playing with a band where you don’t know what people think; it can feel like, ‘Oh gosh, am I going to be on my own here?’ But playing with this band is so far from that. It’s a really nice experience, not only to be backed up [by bandmates] but to have common ground even with people outside of the Jewish community.”
A native of Denver, Colorado, Schwartzberg moved to Kansas City in 2017 to study jazz saxophone at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, learning from accomplished saxophonists Adam Larson and Bobby Watson.
By the time he graduated in 2021, Schwartzberg had performed at venues including the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Black Dolphin and the Blue Room.
A composer and music educator, Schwartzberg also plays with Arnold Young and the RoughTet, an avant-garde jazz group, as well as the jazz-rock horn band Brass Rewind.
But it’s Schwartzberg’s work with Abramovitz’s swing jazz band — for which the saxophonist also handles some musical arrangements — that’s taught him most about local music traditions.
“Playing with these guys, I think there’s something different happening [musically],” he said. “It’s higher energy than most people think of when they think of a jazz band. When you look at us, we don’t necessarily look like we’re going to get up there and have a really good time; we look very much like we’re going to be super boring. And so I think a lot of people hear us defy those expectations and say, ‘Oh, that’s different.’”
Abramovitz’s band won plaudits in 2024 from the Kansas City Pitch, whose readers ranked Abramovitz one of the top jazz vocalists and all-around musicians in the publication’s Best of KC 2024. The singer and several bandmates were also ranked among the best local jazz groups by the Pitch and received numerous 2024 award nominations from JAM (Jazz Ambassador Magazine).
Schwartzberg, who’s been playing with the band for about a year and a half, said his musical path began in third or fourth grade — the year his school music teacher organized a jazz show for the class production.
“We talked about Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and the ‘OG’ cats,” Schwartzberg said. “I came home one day and said to my dad, ‘Hey, I’m into this. What do you know [about jazz]?’ It turns out my dad was already majorly into jazz, and so he burned me a CD of what he called ‘Jacob’s Classic Jazz;’ a little bit of this, a little bit of that, all the things he thought I would need to know.”
Schwartzberg listened to the CD over and over again. He was hooked.
The budding musician picked up the clarinet in fourth grade and switched to saxophone when he entered middle school. As his musical journey progressed, he simultaneously forged his own path of Jewish practice.
“I’ve gone through more and less observant phases,” said Schwartberg, who used to wear tzitzit. “Not that I really think the boxes matter, but I’ve always had a tough time placing myself. I’ve found my own way a little bit.”
Schwartzberg gives much of the credit for his feeling at home in KC’s jazz scene to Abramovitz, 36, who is Christian and of Polish-Jewish descent.
“Jazz is for all kinds of people; people from different backgrounds helped to establish it, made it popular, helped mold it, helped it grow and develop,” said Abramovitz, who JAM named its favorite KC Jazz singer and instrumentalist.
An ally of the Jewish community, Abramovitz took time to check in with Schwartzberg following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
“Alex is one of the only non-Jewish people in my life who cared to ask like, ‘Hey, how are you doing? I know things are tough,’” said Schwartzberg, who lives in Rosedale with his fiancée, ballerina Liat Roth.
“That makes it really easy in a situation like this to feel comfortable and to go to new places all the time to play music,” he said.
Schwartzberg follows in the footsteps of Jewish musicians who played key roles in shaping jazz as an American art form. Saxophonists Stan Getz and Lee Konitz were Jewish. So were Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, considered two of jazz’s greatest clarinetists.
Jazz originated in Black communities in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Kansas City musicians developing unique sounds and styles. As the art form spread it attracted musicians from different cultures and backgrounds, including Jews whose families had fled antisemitic persecution in Europe.
In 1938, Goodman’s groundbreaking concert at Carnegie Hall – the venue’s first jazz performance – also featured the first racially integrated jazz group to play before a paying audience in the U.S.
“The history of jazz came out of a lot of problematic stuff,” said Schwartzberg, alluding to the enslavement of African Americans and Jim Crow laws that subjugated Black musicians.
“To me, there are a ton of parallels to be made between the experience of the Jewish people [and the Black experience in America],” he said. “...We get what it’s like not to be loved by the people around us. And that’s such a big part of where the music came from.”
Abramovitz, a Kansas City native and jazz historian, has been playing jazz venues with his band since 2013 and credits Jewish band leaders like Goodman and Shaw as inspirations.
“As a Kansas City jazz musician, the respect that I have for these guys and what they’ve done is immense, not to mention that the time in which they’re doing it — when antisemitism on a global level is just through the roof — and in the face of that they became some of the most popular entertainers in the world in the 1930s and 1940s,” Abramovitz said.
The Olathe resident said his Jewish ancestors were the subjects of forced conversions to Roman Catholicism in 19th-century Poland. At times, Abramowitz added, his last name has made him a target of antisemitism.
“God’s got a funny sense of humor,” joked the musician, who keeps kosher when he’s with Schwartzberg as a show of respect. “I became a Christian, and God decided to remind me I’m perpetually Jewish.”
Religion seemed to be the last thing on the crowd’s mind as they applauded the band at The Phoenix.
“It’s really cool to be part of Kansas City jazz and this incredible tradition,” Schwartzberg said after the show. “I’m lucky to be making a career doing what I love.”
Saxophonist Jacob Schwartzberg during his performance Nov. 23 at The Phoenix jazz club in Kansas City with “Alex Abramovitz and His Swing'n Kansas City Jazz Band." (Kevin Deutsch)
