San Francisco piano player Jeff Orchard’s jazz and blues music is in its own realm. No boilerplate music, ever. Jazz and blues are rooted in improvisation— a song is never played the same way twice. You’ll be swept away whether its Jeff’s take on The Man I Love, Someday Sweetheart, It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing), or Struttin’ With Some Barbecue—just a sampling of his compendious song list.

Jeff’s music is as current today as a century ago when jazz and blues set the rhythm for the entire nation and kept it moving for decades.

On the baby grand piano at Sheba’s in San Francisco’s lower Fillmore District.

Jeff began performing in San Francisco almost two decades after a hiatus as an attorney in Washington, D.C.

A native New Yorker, Jeff’s piano chops were honed in 1970s New York performing as a sideman in clubs, including with famed trumpeter “Little Jazz” Roy Eldridge and his band at Jimmy Ryan’s.

Jeff becoming a musician was a natural progression since his parents were jazz performers.

Pictured above, Jeff’s father, valve trombonist Frank Orchard, for 40 years helped create the musical backdrop of the times with musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Bobby Hackett and Joe Thomas.

In 1940s New York City Frank Orchard’s Hot Five With Ginger Added, above, featured red-headed vocalist Virginia Reinhard—stage name Peggy Lane–and ultimately Jeff’s mom.

Orchard & Orchard

Frank called each song when he and Jeff performed in New York as Orchard & Orchard in the late 1970s and early 1980s . “My father taught me his repertoire of tunes, many of which he sang and many of which I play and sing today.” Some father-son favorites: Someday Sweetheart, Mean to Me, St. James Infirmary Blues, On the Sunny Side of the Street and Sugar (“That sugar baby of mine”).

Jeff on keys at Revolution Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District.

jefforchardjazz@gmail.com 415-412-0860