Toby Koenigsberg was 6 years old when his grandfather gave him his first lesson about music.
“He pulled out his French horn and played for me,” Koenigsberg recalled, “and I don’t remember it exactly, but the point is that he wasn’t very good. And he said something like, ‘I’ve been playing for five years and this is all I can do, so if you’re going to play music you should start when you’re young.’”
And so began Koenigsberg’s 24-year relationship with the piano, an experience that has taken the University graduate around the country, from New York to California, and right back to Eugene again, where he now serves as assistant professor of jazz piano and associate director of jazz studies in the University’s School of Music and Dance.
Since his return to Eugene about two years ago, Koenigsberg has formed a strong connection with Luna, the jazz-based nightclub attached to Adam’s Place restaurant. His monthly performances at the venue last year went so well that the club requested Koenigsberg do a similar gig on a weekly basis.
With his first performance a solo act, tonight will mark the Toby Koenigsberg Trio’s second weekly performance at Luna. This evening’s trio will be composed of Koenigsberg on piano, graduate student Jason Palmer on drums and junior Dorian Crow on bass guitar. Koenigsberg, who has been leading jazz piano trios for almost 13 years, said this sort of group has a very rich history within the jazz genre.
“There have been a lot of great jazz piano trios that have built off of what earlier jazz piano trios have done,” he said. “So there’s this great tradition and it’s given someone like me, who’s playing jazz a hundred years after its birth, a lot of stuff to work with.”
Tonight, the trio will feature the music of Portland-native, folk-punk artist Elliott Smith. The singer/songwriter was probably best known for his song “Miss Misery,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998 for its appearance in the film “Good Will Hunting.” To the great sadness of his loved ones and fans, however, the artist committed suicide on Oct. 21, 2003 while working on his sixth album, “From a Basement on a Hill,” which was released posthumously.
“I play his songs well because I have such a deep feeling about his music, because I love it so much,” Koenigsberg said. “I’ve also found that it’s especially adaptable to jazz settings. The harmonies are really intricate and varied, which is more like jazz and less like a lot of pop music.”
Tomorrow’s two-year anniversary of Smith’s death, however, was not a factor in the trio’s decision to play his music at tonight’s event.
“It was just a strange coincidence,” said Palmer, who has performed with
Koenigsberg since their younger days together at South Eugene High School. “Elliott Smith has been in the consciousness of Toby and I for the last two years. We’d talked about doing this performance for a long time and the time that we actually end up doing it turned out to be almost the anniversary of his death.”
All three of the musicians agreed that the performance will have something to offer University students. Crow, who has been playing bass for about 12 years and has performed with Koenigsberg at Luna once before, said he believes it’s valuable for students to see University-based music outside of the campus atmosphere.
“I also think some of the tunes, especially in this show coming up, are going to be pretty cool,” he said. “They’re more unusual for a jazz group to be playing. I think it’s always nice to breathe new life into jazz music, to take the concept of improvisation and everything else that goes into jazz and apply it to more popular music.”
Koenigsberg said one of the things he loves most about jazz is the way almost any type of music can find a home in the genre. This, however, also poses some obstacles in performance settings.
“In popular music, there’s usually one recording that is sort of the definitive version of a song,” Koenigsberg said. “So, when you’re completely changing the medium from, say, vocalist and electric guitar to piano trio, it’s obviously going to sound a lot different than that one version everybody knows. I think the challenge is being able to change it to work in the new medium while still retaining the essence of the song.”
If done right, Palmer said creative jazz – the type that fuses different kinds of modern music into a jazz format – has the potential to be an art music that people today can really relate to.
Tonight’s performance will begin at 6:30 p.m. The cover charge for the performance is $3. Luna is located at 30 E. Broadway. For more information, check out the Web site at www.lunajazz.com.

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