Stefon Harris

Vibraphonist/composer Stefon Harris has been heralded as "one of the most important young artists in jazz" by The Los Angeles Times.

A graduate of Manhattan School of Music, Harris received a B.M. in classical music and an M.M. in jazz performance. He is a recipient of the prestigious Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center and has three consecutive Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Album. His 2004 recording Evolution (Blue Note) features his band Blackout and was voted by Jazz Times as one of its top 50 albums. His 2006 album combines arrangements of rarely performed Ellington music with an original suite, "The Gardner Meditations," commissioned by the Wharton Center at Michigan State University. He has been voted Best Mallet player by the Jazz Journalist Association in six consecutive years. In addition, he has won the Down Beat Critics Poll for Vibraphone and Rising Star, Vibraphone (2004); Debut Artist of the Year from both Jazz Times and Chicago Tribune; Newsweek's Best Jazz CD; and Jazziz Magazine's Best New Talent and 1999–2000 Readers' Poll Best Vibraphonist.

Harris has performed at many of the world's most distinguished concert halls, including Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Sydney Opera House. An active educator, he conducts over 100 clinics and lectures annually at schools and universities worldwide, teaches at New York University, and has been artist-in-residence at San Francisco Performances and at the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.