A seasoned and highly respected figure on the Hartford, Connecticut jazz scene, guitarist-educator Rich Goldstein has been gigging, recording, and sharing the bandstand with his mentors and his students over the past 30 years. His latest recording, Into the Blue, is a swinging affair that pairs him with Hammond B-3 organist and longtime collaborator Yahn Frankel alongside vibraphonist Behn Gillece and drummer Ben Bilello. Goldstein and his accomplished crew deliver in old school fashion on a program of soul jazz takes on well known standards by Thelonious Monk, Django Reinhardt, Horace Silver, Stevie Wonder and the Beatles, along with two numbers popularized by Dinah Washington and Jack McDuff. “I love the organ groups going back to Wes Montgomery’s first album with Mel Rhyne, which was heavily influential for me,” said the guitarist. “But I liked all of the organ groups from those times -- Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Dr. Lonnie Smith. I came up with all that stuff. And I’m a blues player at heart. That’s really where I come from.” 

Born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, Goldstein’s family moved to South Windsor, Connecticut in his childhood. By the time he was 12 he played in various high school bands performing at school dances, local fairs, and the occasion nightclub, like The Russian Lady in downtown Hartford. 

Following his early years playing pop and rock, Goldstein began gravitating toward jazz. “When I bought my first records outside the Stones, Hendrix, Beck and Led Zeppelin, it was Wes’ Full House, Barney Kessel’s ’57 Poll Winners, Charlie Parker’s Now’s the Time, Frank Zappa’s Them or Us and Alan Holdsworth’s Metal Fatigue, all bought on the same day when I was 13 or 14. These sounds really opened my mind to the possibilities outside of what I was hearing on mainstream radio. I really loved music and guitar and was exploring all the possibilities so I studied classical guitar for about a year and auditioned for the Hartt School and got in”, “I did a year as a Classical major but then one of the bands I was in ended up getting signed to an indie label and moving to Minneapolis when I was 18 or 19,” he recalls. “We toured all around the Midwest, but nothing else really came of it.” “While I was in Minneapolis I really got into John Scofield and spent a lot of hours trying to play like him.” 

While he hadn’t had any real formal jazz training at that point, resorting strictly to playing by ear and picking up licks off of records, it was seeing New York-based guitarist Randy Johnston performing at the 880 Club in Hartford’s South End that finally convinced Goldstein to study jazz improvisation. “I made the decision right there and then that I really had to pursue this music more seriously,” he said. “I ended up talking to Jackie McLean and he let me into the program he established at The Hartt School. So I made that change around that time and became really focused on trying to play jazz.” 

Goldstein studied jazz guitar at The Hartt School’s Jackie McLean Institute with Johnston and got his degree in African American Music Studies while gigging with R@B and blues bands five or six nights a week all through college. He later began teaching at Hartt himself in 1994 following a recommendation from his own mentor, guitarist Johnston. “When I was asked to teach at Hartt, I was in shock and considered it a great honor, and I still do,” he said. “Jackie was a huge inspiration, truly one of the greatest. And his mark on the saxophone, jazz improv, and Hartford will remain through history.” Goldstein later received his masters degree at SUNY-Purchase in 2009 (he wrote his masters thesis on another guitar hero, Jim Hall) and he subsequently studied with guitar great John Abercrombie. 

To date, the guitarist has shared the stage with a wide range of musicians, from sax legend Houston Person to trombonist Steve Davis, tenor saxophonist and former Jazz Messenger Javon Jackson, Cuban drumming great Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, Hartford gospel artist Hubert Powell and jam band legend, drummer Jaimoe, the last surviving member of the original Allman Brothers Band. Goldstein played regular duo gigs with pianist Andy LaVerne including one at New York’s Cornelia Street Café during the club’s Bill Evans 80th Birthday Celebration and also played duo with fellow guitarist Peter Bernstein at Vito’s in Hartford. Goldstein played the late night set at Smalls in the Village every Tuesday for a number of years in a group with Behn Gillece and Ken Fowser (both Posi-Tone recording artists). “We used to start at midnight and never got home till the sun was rising. Smalls was great because I was exposed to so many great musicians, we would have Spike Wilner or Jeremy Manasia on piano, sometimes Joel Frahm played with us, you never would know who might be there, one night even the great Roy Hargrove sat in.” Other New York City venues included Birdland, The Jazz Gallery, and Fat Cat as well as at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston and Black Eyed Sally’s in Hartford. He has also played The Atlanta Jazz Fest, The Cancun Jazz Fest and The Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven. Goldstein has presented many Masterclasses on the East coast and has appeared as a guest with the Farmington and New Haven Symphonies, The Hartford Jazz Orchestra, New England Jazz Ensemble, etc. 

In addition to his own three albums as a leader — 2008’s Wes Montgomery tribute, Comin’ from Montgomery, 2011’s Effervescent and 2024’s Into the Blue — Goldstein has recorded as a sideman on albums by Charles Flores, Rob Zappulla, Jim Argiro and Ed Fast & Conga Bop (he appears on their 2017 outing, Do or Die, which also marks one of the last recorded appearances of guitar great Larry Coryell). 

In addition to his long tenure at The Hartt School, he has taught at Central Connecticut College, Southern Connecticut State University, Choate boarding school, Avon Old Farms boarding school, the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and the Canton and Litchfield Jazz Camps. He was also a regular attending member of the annual Jazz Education Network (JEN) conference.