Visiting Wolverhampton on his forthcoming UK jazz tour will “complete my life”, Hollywood star and musician Jeff Goldblum has declared.
The Jewish actor, who has appeared in blockbusters including the Jurassic Park franchise and Wicked is scheduled to perform in the city next month. with his band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – named for as part of a series of UK gigs on his world tour, The Night Blooms.
The West Midlands city will mark the first stop on the UK arm of his tour, with a show at The Halls at the University of Wolverhampton. In June he will perform at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal, Manchester’s Palace Theatre and London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Speaking to BBC Radio West Midlands ahead of these appearances, the Hollywood A-lister enthused: “Wolverhampton is one of the great places on Earth that I've never been... it will complete my life.”
The 73-year-old, who formed his jazz band in the 1990s and has been playing the piano since he was a child, promised to give the city a “big embrace” when he arrives.
Goldblum grew up in a Jewish family in a suburb close to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Hebrew school. He has previously described how it was while studying the Torah portion for his bar mitzvah that he realised he had found his “professional calling” as an actor.
At 17 he moved to New York to pursue this dream, working in small stage shows until his Broadway breakout in the Tony Award-winning rock musical adaption Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In a 2014 interview with Esquire, Goldblum revealed his “affection” for the Yiddish language, saying: “I speak a little bit. My parents had learnt some from their [grandparents].”
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