Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra

Half the room came for the man from the movies and leaves having fallen for the piano player. Something delights in watching a face you associate with dinosaurs and eccentric monologues sit down at a jazz piano and turn out to genuinely, unfussily swing. Jeff Goldblum has been playing standards on quiet Monday nights for decades, and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra is a real band, loose and warm and funnier than it has any right to be. He'll tell a rambling story, take a request, tease the crowd, then drop into a ballad that shuts the whole lawn up. It's the rare night where the jazz obsessive who owns the vinyl and the person who just wanted to see a celebrity end up elbow to elbow, both grinning like idiots. He always ends up chatting with the front row between numbers. Bring someone who swears they don't like jazz and watch them quietly cave over the course of one warm, slightly ridiculous evening on the downtown bayfront.