Pianist/composer
Michael Jefry Stevens is a musician at the forefront of both modern mainstream jazz and creative improvised musics. Born March 13, 1951, in New York City, he took early piano studies at five years of age, moved with his family to Florida at age eight, and after many years of practice, took up rock & roll as a teenager playing the Farfisa organ. But he heard modern jazz, specifically
Miles Davis and
John Coltrane, and it transformed his style. After a short and uninspired stint in college,
Stevens returned to N.Y.C. in 1980; studied at Queens College with
Sir Roland Hanna,
Jimmy Heath, and
Donald Byrd; and eventually received a master's degree in music in 1992. But
Stevens was already quite active on the Big Apple music scene as of the late '80s, working alongside saxophonist
Mark Whitecage in the ensemble Liquid Time. The most prolific group the pianist played with was
the Mosaic Sextet, which included a young
Dave Douglas on trumpet, violinist
Mark Feldman,
Michael Rabinowitz on bassoon, bassist
Joe Fonda, and drummer
Harvey Sorgen. Subsequent collaborations and partnerships were with the
Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson trio, several other ensembles with
Fonda and
Sorgen (most prominently
the Fonda-Stevens Group with
Whitecage and trumpeter
Herb Robertson), and the cooperative ensemble
Conference Call with
Fonda and featuring saxophonist/clarinetist
Gebhard Ullmann. He has also worked with guitarist
Dom Minasi; bassist
Dominic Duval; saxophonist
Daunik Lazro; drummers
Matt Wilson,
George Schuller, and
Jay Rosen; and guitarist
Jon Hemmersam.
Stevens was artist in residence on the keyboard faculty of the National Guitar Workshops in New Milford, CT, from 1990-2002; was on the faculty of Five Towns College from 1992-1995; was artist in residence at the Virginia Intermont College in 1999; and received a Margaret Lee Croft Fellowship in 2000. He has also served as a composition fellow at the Centrum Arts Colony in Port Townsend, WA, and was active at the Royal Music Academy in Denmark in 2002.
Stevens has conducted regular workshops in La Plata, Argentina, as well as Lichtenstein and Mexico, and since 2002 has been on the faculty of Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. The recordings of
Stevens are available on the Konnex, GM, Leo, Soul Note, and 482 labels. He has written over 400 compositions ranging from solo to string quartet to big-band styles for concert and dance performance, and has toured worldwide for three decades. His recent ensembles include the band In Transit and the Songbook Project with vocalist
Miles Griffith. ~ Michael G. Nastos