It’s a given that, when you play piano in a restaurant, you’re little more than part of the wallpaper. You blend in, like the lighting or the furniture, serving merely as the soundtrack in back of diners’ conversations.

 

So why is it there are times when Danny Sinoff is playing jazz so hot, the conversations fade and all attention turns to the man at the keyboard? That’s how it is sometimes when Mr. Sinoff (along with his bass player, Scott Smith, and drummer, Patricia Dean) performs, which he does several nights a week at the Wyvern Hotel’s 88 Keys Florida Restaurant, and on Tuesdays at La Fiorentina, both in Punta Gorda. The vibe goes from background music to almost a concert atmosphere, where Mr. Sinoff becomes the star of the show.

“There are times, even here (at 88 Keys), when you could hear a pin drop,” he said. “It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s special.”

“There have been numerous times when Danny gets a standing ovation here,” Ms. Dean added, “and I’m thinking, ‘Who gets a standing ovation in a restaurant?’”

 

Mr. Sinoff does — because he’s that damned good.

 

But getting to that place has been the result of a long journey.

 

“I guess you’ve got to pay your dues, as they like to say,” he said. “You’ve got to learn the ropes as far as how gigs work. You have to learn from the people around you. As your name gets out, and people say, ‘This guy’s doing this and he’s great,’ and different guys hire you, you meet new people.

 

“Eventually, you find the right people that you have the best chemistry with. And that took me a long time. Now I have the best band I’ve ever had in my life. But it took a lifetime to get to that point.”

 

And he does mean a lifetime.

 

Piano man

 

Mr. Sinoff was adopted, so it’s hard for him to pin down his genetic background. But the eldest of his two daughters, 15, has definitely inherited her dad’s music gene. Most folks would probably be surprised at her age, as Mr. Sinoff easily looks a decade younger than his 37 years.

 

Of those 37, he’s been playing music for 35 of them, having first been attracted to the piano at the ripe old age of 2.

 

“My parents got me started right away with private lessons,” he said. “They went through several teachers until they found one that they liked.”

As with many piano students, Mr. Sinoff was trained early on to play classical music, which he was, let’s say, less than fond of.

 

“I hated it,” he said. “Most young students do. But I started to enjoy it as I got better. I’m glad now, because it’s a great foundation — it’s a necessary foundation — to have.”

 

He also learned to play clarinet (receiving private lessons from Paul Votapek, who’s now the principal clarinetist with the Naples Philharmonic) and taught himself to play drums, bass and guitar.

 

“I was in a lot of rock bands,” Mr. Sinoff said. “I wrote music in a lot of different styles.”

 

One lesson he learned early on from his parents was that if you believe you can do something, and you stick to it, you will eventually succeed at it.

 

“I know it sounds cliché,” he said, “but when I was going into classical piano competitions, my mom would always say, ‘Just keep practicing. Keep doing what you’re doing. I know you can’t do it now, but you’re going to be able to do it if you keep practicing.’ And eventually, I won first place two years in a row in that competition.”

 

In fact, Mr. Sinoff’s first professional engagement was playing classical music during a Wednesday night buffet at a neighborhood restaurant — 20 bucks for two hours’ work. He was 13 years old.

 

“I think the only jazz number I played — because I had found an old fake book — was ‘St. Louis Blues,’” he said. “But that was the first gig.”

 

Then something happened that revolutionized Mr. Sinoff’s career path.

 

“My dad played a Harry Connick Jr. record for me when I was about 15,” he recalled. “That’s when I got the jazz bug. That’s when I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ That’s where it all really started.”

 

Mr. Sinoff discovered that the classical technique he had been developing for so many years gave him a leg up to be able to play jazz music.

 

“That’s why the classical background is so vital to what I do now,” he noted.

 

At about 17, he put together his first “real” band. The group called itself The Fullstack Five, a name his bass player came up with — a nod to Eugene Fullstack, a character the late comic actor Jerry Lewis portrayed in the 1955 comedy “Artists and Models” — and they performed at the former Backstage Tap & Grill in Naples’ Waterside shops.

 

“A lot of my rock musician friends from high school started getting into jazz music,” Mr. Sinoff said. “Maybe I said something to him about it, but my guitar player, best friend of mine, started playing jazz guitar. My electric bassist had his parents buy him an upright bass. We had a saxophone, as well. From there, I started playing out of a fake book.”

 

A “fake book,” which is common in the music industry, is a book of songs whose scores are pared down from those originally written by the composer or arranger, usually containing only the melody line and the chords. Having only the skeleton of the song structures makes it difficult for novices to follow, but ripe for improvisation at the hands of a trained musician — such as Mr. Sinoff.

 

“I didn’t know any of these tunes,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about jazz standards. We just kind of went up there and started playing and got a job and got paid for it.”

 

Mr. Sinoff admitted the group was not well versed as jazz musicians either, which require an entirely different skill set from playing rock.

 

“It was a lot of fun, though,” he said. “It was all kind of thrown together but we drew really big crowds.”

 

With no one to teach him the rudiments of great jazz, Mr. Sinoff opted to teach himself.

 

Stealing like an artist

 

In pretty much every form of art — be it painting, writing, singing, playing an instrument, etc. — most novices learn by imitation. They “borrow” from the established talent of others, which eventually leads to them finding their own style or voice.

 

Mr. Sinoff honed his craft by listening to the greats, starting with his No. 1 influence, Harry Connick Jr., from whom he picked up both vocalization and piano playing.

 

“Shortly thereafter, I discovered Sinatra,” Mr. Sinoff said. “Really, I learned the singing part of it from Frank Sinatra — by listening to his records and singing along with him. That’s how I learned to sing. I never had a vocal lesson. It’s also how I learned a lot of the great standards.”

 

His other influences on piano include Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau.

 

“More recently, Mulgrew Miller has had a really big influence on my playing, especially in the last six months,” Mr. Sinoff said.

 

There were personal mentors along the way, as well.

 

“One mentor was someone I played with about five, six years straight by the name of Dan Miller, a trumpeter,” he said. “He was a great influence when I thought I knew what I was doing but I didn’t really know what I was doing on a gigs, especially being a leader. He played with the Harry Connick Jr. orchestra for 11 years, and with Maynard Ferguson, Tom Jones, Wynton Marsalis. He’d been around the world. He taught me how to announce band members. He taught me about songs.

 

“And then there’s Scott Smith, my bassist, who has been a fabulous influence on me — more so than anybody else. We keep each other accountable for learning and memorizing tunes, bandstand etiquette. He’s my No. 1 right now. My drummer, Patricia Dean, has also been a mentor to me, and an influence in many good ways.”

 

Mr. Sinoff’s talent and professionalism paid off a few years back. A resident of Fort Myers, he landed his first regular gig in Charlotte County at the now-defunct Table 209 in Punta Gorda. When the manager who hired him, Joe LeClair, moved on to JD’s Bistro in Port Charlotte, he took Mr. Sinoff’s act with him.

 

“He made that the premier place to hear jazz in Charlotte County, in my opinion,” Mr. Sinoff said. “It had a beautiful grand piano, a stage and lighting, soft atmosphere, great advertising and service — the whole nine yards. It was really a great spot.”

 

That gig lasted five years, and brought Mr. Sinoff a flock of fans.

 

Even today, he has a following of folks who will frequently come out to hear him tear it up at the Wyvern.

 

The sultan of swing

 

Florida Weekly caught up with Mr. Sinoff’s act on a recent Friday night at 88 Keys. The bar area was packed, with many of the customers being obvious fans. As the gig neared its close, Mr. Sinoff had everyone’s attention. This went way beyond a typical subdued piano bar performance.

 

As with the adage that “Easy reading is the result of hard writing,” the kind of seamlessness so evident in the trio’s playing doesn’t come without effort.

 

As frequently as they play together, they still rehearse. It helps them maintain that rare intuitive connection among musicians.

 

For Mr. Sinoff, this is critical, because he usually doesn’t have a set list. Hell, most of the time he doesn’t even have the music in front of him.

 

“I try to read the audience,” he explained. “Somebody once asked Louis Armstrong what his favorite song was to play. And he said, ‘My favorite song to play is what the audience wants to hear most.’ I’m a huge believer in that, as well. There are times I may not want to play a tune because I don’t like it, but if the audience wants it, we’re going to play it. We play every single request that comes to us.”

 

It’s safe to say that Punta Gorda resident Nanette Leonard — a public relations professional who has worked for Hollywood studios, as well an agency where her clients included major movie stars — knows talent when she sees it. And she sees it in Mr. Sinoff.

 

“He gets into a zone, and he’s nowhere here,” she said. “He’s somewhere else. His fingers are moving around the keyboard but he’s just not here. I’ve seen drummers do that. It’s amazing.”

 

It’s a moment Mr. Sinoff finds difficult to articulate.

 

“There are other things that are hard to explain unless — well, I guess if you’re a jazz lover, you can understand, but not as much as if you play jazz — but it’s how it feels when it swings,” he said. “When it swings and it’s all connected and everything sets down, there’s no greater feeling in the world — especially when you’re working with players who do it consistently. Sometimes even a non-musician as a listener can pick up when it’s swinging, when it’s really hooked up. They’ll know that moment.”

 

Punta Gorda-based professional singer/ entertainer Valerie Sneade — who has performed at venues in New York City and Boston, and has sung with Broadway stars — would agree with Ms. Leonard’s assessment.

 

“These guys are true jazz cats,” she said. “Danny — and Scott and Patricia, as well — are phenomenal at what they do. Most people in the audience like him because he sounds so good, but I know there’s a lot they’re missing, a lot of brilliant nuances they’re not picking up on because their ears aren’t trained to recognize it, but I can hear it.”

 

Few would argue with Ms. Dean’s appraisal of her bandleader: “He’s very captivating with an audience. He has incredible charisma and tremendous energy. I think he’s the best undiscovered talent out there. And I don’t say that because I work for him — I really believe that.”

 

One of the things on his plate that should garner him some attention is a current composing project.

 

“I’m working on a film score right now,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to say what it is, but I’m going to be writing jazz for this movie — mostly jazz trio stuff, some vocal and some just instrumental for the whole thing.

 

“I’ve been composing more recently than I ever have. Right now, I’m working on piano music. It’s not necessarily jazz or classical piano; it’s just melodies, piano melodies. I don’t quite know how to explain it.”

 

He’d also like to perform more concerts and at venues where he and his band can have an audience’s full attention.

 

But for Mr. Sinoff, “discovery” would be nice, but not necessary. There are few people who have heard him play who would doubt that, with all his talents, Mr. Sinoff should rightfully be a bigger “name” than in the industry than he is, but that’s not his goal.

 

“I’m not in this because I want to become rich and famous,” he said. “I’m in this because I love what I do. I would be OK playing with this group and doing what I do every night to make a decent living just around here for the rest of my life.”

 

But if Mr. Sinoff’s career ended that way, it would be a shame. This guy can swing, and more people need to hear it — and feel it — for themselves. Because, like the man said, when it swings, there’s no greater feeling in the world.