Latter-day Troubadour

The tradition is long. And so is the road. But for a troubadour, there is no other path.

What exactly is a troubadour? Think back to medieval times when traveling bands of musicians roamed the land. Carrying their instruments on their backs, the troubadours worked for food and places to rest. Day to day, their next stopping-off point was an unknown. But the talented musical vagabonds’ love for music would afford them no other lifestyle choice.

Steve Sternberg of Tallahassee is a latter-day troubadour. He holds two college degrees, has been a school teacher, a recording artist, an artist-in-residence at schools and community colleges, and a prolific instrumental instructor.

He appears to be vulnerable to the same restless draw of music — music of all kinds played on the array of instruments he has mastered — that propelled wandering minstrels through the ages.

Seated outside his modest southside home, the 73-year-old Sternberg, charming and professorial, talks about American music from the blues to jazz, rock, folk and soul. He has played them all and has become a virtuoso performer on instruments required by the shifting tastes of America.

“Mom gave all three of her boys piano lessons,” he said. “That led to everything else.”

Musician, entertainer and teacher Steve Sternberg plays instruments including the saxophone, piano, flute and harmonica. As a younger man, Sternberg, 73, idolized Sonny Boy Williams and Taj Mahal. Photo by Dave Barfield

Sternberg’s piano teacher introduced him to jazz notes, and his high school band brought the saxophone into his life. He took a musical hiatus while working at being a “high school jock.” But then, during a surfing trip with buddies to California, the then 18-year-old Sternberg discovered the harmonica.

“Bob Dylan was popular then, and Sonny Boy Williamson and Taj Mahal kind of became my idols,” Sternberg said. The harmonica stirred back to life Sternberg’s musical passions.

“I took up piano again, writing my own music, joining a band and teaching myself to play the flute,” he said.

By the time he entered Brandeis University in Massachusetts, Sternberg was playing gigs in restaurants and at weddings and doing saxophone solos with local rock bands.

“I so badly needed an acoustic piano that my buddies and I piled a used one into the back of a pickup truck, and I played it right through Harvard Square in Cambridge,” he laughed.

The gigs picked up, and Sternberg toured with a rock band throughout the Northeast and for a year attended the Berklee School of Music. But he had become a new father, and now money took on a greater importance.

“After working for a while in a hospital for emotionally troubled children — which was my first time dealing with little ones — and a series of odd jobs, I moved the family to Miami to work in the family business, and later to Gainesville,” Sternberg said. At the University of Florida, he earned a master’s degree in elementary education and “really began to understand the joy of teaching music.”

Soon, he was teaching a large group of students.

“Thirty-three students a week — me alone teaching everything from saxophone to flute, harmonica and piano,” Sternberg recalled. “Kids and adults, we did two recitals a year and developed some incredible musicians.”

Then the troubadour gene must have truly turned on. Sternberg was playing and touring with a salsa band, a Top 40 band, a rhythm-and-blues band and a dance band, as well as teaching. And then he cycled back to Gainesville.

He took up teaching music in rural schools as an artist-in-residence in 14 Florida counties, and later, in 10 Leon County schools. Meanwhile, he was composing and beginning to record CDs. His first album was devoted to piano music.

Sternberg works with a piano student. He got started as a music teacher traveling to schools in 14 rural Florida counties before settling in Tallahassee. Today, at his home, he teaches genres including classical, blues, rock, pop and jazz. Photo by Dave Barfield

His song Apalachicola Blues won a Best New Florida Song award from the Will McLean Foundation. He published a harmonica how-to book. The Florida Folk Festival invited Sternberg to conduct jazz history and ragtime piano seminars, something he did for seven years. At the studio he has at his home, he began and continues to record himself and others.

Today, Sternberg plays at retirement centers and continues to welcome eager students, no matter their instrument of choice. But can he still be called a troubadour?

If that definition includes spreading his music across the land to any who will listen, Steve Sternberg is indeed the genuine article.

Students Wanted

Steve Sternberg is currently accepting students. He can be reached at pianosteves@gmail.com or (850) 320-0010.