Contact

stefon.harris@rutgers.edu

Musician / Educator / Developer / Thought Leader. Stefon Harris is a Grammy-nominated jazz vibraphonist, educator, app developer, and thought leader. He is an Associate Professor of Music at Rutgers University – Newark, Director of the Harmony Lab, and Co-Director of Express Newark.

Harris has been heralded as “one of the most important artists in jazz” (Los Angeles Times) and is a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award and the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center. He has been named Best Mallet Player eight times by the Jazz Journalist Association and Best Vibes Player in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Poll. Harris currently tours with his Grammy-nominated band, Blackout, and has released eleven albums as a leader. He has also recorded and performed with The Classical Jazz Quartet, Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, the SFJAZZ Collective, Joe Henderson, Wynton Marsalis, Milt Jackson, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Max Roach, Chaka Khan, Kurt Elling, Buster Williams, Dianne Reeves, Common, and Pablo Zeigler.

As an educator, Harris has taught at universities throughout the world, led curriculum development at the Brubeck Institute, served as a part of the jazz faculty at New York University for a decade, and formerly served as the Associate Dean and Director of Jazz Arts at Manhattan School of Music. Currently, along with his work at Express Newark and Rutgers University – Newark, he is also Artistic Advisor of Jazz Education at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC).

As a thought leader, Harris leads transformative presentations on corporate leadership and team empowerment for Fortune 100 companies using jazz as a metaphor. His 2012 TED Talk, “There Are No Mistakes on the Bandstand,” has gained nearly 900,000 views. In 2013, he co-founded The Melodic Progression Institute (MPI) and created an ear training app called Harmony Cloud which is widely used by musicians across multiple genres.

Harris is committed to the proliferation of empathy through the arts and empowering others with the necessary tools to articulate their authentic voices.