At just 27, jazz pianist, vocalist and actor Bryan Eng has already appeared on Broadway with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick in a revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” released two albums, racked up tens of thousands listens on Spotify and is closing in on 100,000 followers on Instagram. For a guy who grew up watching “American Idol” with his family in his native Maryland where a generation learned stardom is as easy as standing in line for a golden ticket to Hollywood, Eng has taken a decidedly old-school approach to learning his craft by touring the country with his trio.

“I just chose the natural path for me,” Eng explains in an interview with Eldredge ATL. “We took a grassroots approach. It was about building our audience and trying to reach people one show at a time.”

The strategy is clearly working. Now living in New York City, Eng is now the youngest performer to ever hold a residency at the storied Bemelmans bar inside the iconic Carlyle Hotel, sometimes playing seven sets a night adjacent to where Bobby Short once worked. And on Sunday night, Feb. 8, Eng’s trio will return to the Velvet Note in Alpharetta, one of the best intimate jazz listening spaces in the metro area.

Like his musical hero Harry Connick Jr., Eng can croon as passionately as Sinatra in his early Columbia Records years and as intimately as Chet Baker on his Riverside recordings. But it’s behind the piano where Eng becomes a dynamo. He has the classical chops of Dave Brubeck, the lyricism of Bill Evans and the swing of Oscar Peterson. He credits fellow jazz pianist Emmet Cohen for his development on the instrument. Between livestreams of his “Emmet’s Place” concerts from his New York apartment that helped turn him into an international phenomenon during the pandemic lockdown, Cohen, a former child prodigy was also giving Eng piano lessons on Zoom.

“I owe it all to Emmet,” says Eng. “I played piano classically growing up. I could sight-read in auditions. But it wasn’t until after college that I got into jazz in a serious way and began listening to the masters. As Emmet told me, ‘There’s no secret to this, just hard work. And most people don’t want to do it.’”

Eng’s work ethic is a testament to Cohen’s sage advice. For his first album, 2019’s “20,” Eng, who was a Senior at Northwestern University at the time, wrote all the arrangements, produced the record and led a 27-piece orchestra and string section, largely comprised of his fellow students. On the album’s opening track, “Like Someone in Love,” Eng conveys the joy of a new relationship as effectively as Ella Fitzgerald and transforms Elton John and Tim Rice’s “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” into a Dixieland swing session worthy of a Mardi Gras parade down Bourbon Street. “It was just music that spoke to me at that time,” says Eng. “I’ve grown to love that album because it represents who I was and how I was seeing things at the time.”

The singer-songwriter’s second album, 2024’s “A Few Days with You,” is a stripped-down trio record, combining fresh interpretations of standards like “Unforgettable” and “Change Partners” with his own originals, including the reflective title track. Says Eng: “On the second album I was able to showcase some of my own compositions and arrangements that were more collectively created as a trio. It was just the three of us working together to come up with those.”

As he continues to evolve as a songwriter, Eng is inspired by the works of James Taylor and Billy Joel, two of the artists his parents had on repeat while he was growing up. His latest single, “Sleep Song,” released Friday, is a piano-based lullaby while “Oh Home” began its life as a poem scribbled in a journal on a visit back to Maryland while staring at a poster of Selena Gomez in his childhood bedroom. It’s a wistful and touching dialogue between a now-grown man and the house that watched him grow up.

“I wrote it not thinking it would ever become a song,” reflects Eng. “It kind of got lost in one of my journals. I had gone home and all my siblings had grown up and moved out. It was just me and my parents in this place that used to mean something entirely different to me. The song grew out of that experience.”

As lines form early on weekends with tourists and jazz lovers alike hoping to catch one of his sets inside the Carlyle Hotel’s Bemelmans Bar, Eng doesn’t take the prestigious gig for granted. “Last weekend there were people there from Australia and Bangkok,” he says. “People come here from all over the world to have that quintessential New York night. They want to order a martini and sit in that room with the beautiful murals and hear music made famous by Frank Sinatra and others. It’s a true honor to uphold that legacy and create a memorable experience for people.”

For his pair of shows this Super Bowl Sunday at the Velvet Note in Alpharetta, Bryan Eng has a similar goal. “I just want people to have a good time and find a moment of relief in a time when we’re all looking for that,” Eng says. “I like to keep it real onstage. I just try and reach people where we all are as humans. It’s about using music to connect with each other. The Velvet Note is the perfect space for that. It’s 40 people in a small room where we can find a moment of peace together. That’s my goal each night with each performance.” 

Bryan Eng and his trio will perform Sunday, Feb. 8 at the Velvet Note in Alpharetta at 4075 Old Milton Parkway at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. The 6:30 show is sold out. For more information and tickets, go to the club’s official website.

You can follow Bryan Eng on his Instagram, TikTok and Facebook pages and find his latest tour dates on his official website. His albums and singles are streaming on Spotify and other streaming services.

Above photos by Faith Decker