Over the past 35 years, pianist/composer Michael Jefry Stevens has been associated with some of the most important figures in modern jazz…and now Asheville gets to claim him!
Born in New York City, Michael grew up in the projects of Queens, then moved at age eight to Miami Beach and lived there until eighteen. At only five, Michael heard the “sound” of the piano on the radio, started playing, and that was it!
“I’ve been in love with piano my entire life. I studied from age five to eight, but stopped studying when we moved to Florida.” Once there, Michael played trombone through high school in marching and concert bands. He also performed rock n roll through high school on the compact Farfisa organ that we’ve all heard on the mid 60s hit “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs.
“The Beatles were my BIG influence until jazz, which I heard for first time in high school. I went to college in Massachusetts, but dropped out at twenty to practice piano and study jazz.” Graduating from college in 1975, he moved to Boston for five years, then relocated to New York City in 1980 where he remained until 2002 when he moved to Memphis, responding to a call of the heart. Her name is Tina!
“My wife then decided she’d had enough of academia and told me we were moving to Asheville, which we did last year. I’d never been here, but Asheville is in many ways like a miniature New York, as far as music goes – a very lively and inspired scene with an extremely talented pool of players searching for new sounds and their own voices. I find it quite exhilarating here amidst so much creativity and positive energy, plus the incredible nature that’s everywhere—and now this city boy is living in a log cabin out in the woods!”
Michael Jefry Stevens has composed over 400 works for various ensembles, including big band, string quartet, music for voice, music for solo instruments and various small group compositions.
A proponent of the philosophy that there are only two kinds of music (“good and bad”), Michael has also been working in a standard jazz piano trio setting for the past twenty years. His collaborative trio “Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson” has released six CDs and toured Europe and the United States continuously for the past two decades. They’ve worked with such jazz luminaries as Steve Turre, Cecil Bridgewater and Valery Ponamerev.
“I think one’s relationship to their instrument is much the same as relating to a close friend or loved one. Over time I’ve become more and more comfortable sitting at the piano. When I first started composing it was more about releasing emotions pent up inside of me, but now the creative process is an act of exploring the unknown in an effort to find something beautiful and profound.”
In 1999, Michael began the Conference Call Quartet which has released six CDs and appeared at the Bolzano Jazz Festival in Italy, Nattjazz Festival in Norway, Braga Jazz Festival in Portugal, Discover US Jazz Festival in Berlin, and most recently the NOEWA Jazz Workshop Series in Hungary. Michael is artist-in-residence every year at the jazz workshop at Educacion Musicale in La Plata, Argentina and he’s been on the performing artist roster of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 1998.
“My influences? They’re quite disparate – the Beatles to Bartok to Bach to blues and Miles Davis, Coltrane, Joni Mitchell and Sarah Vaughn—from musicals my mother used to play on the stereo to Jimi Hendrix, the Yardbirds. I guess you could say pretty much everything I’ve heard or listened to has had an influence on me, but primarily it starts with 60’s rock n roll—then 60’s jazz—and always classical music!!”
“Michael J. Stevens is wealth: in freshness, stylistic, artful, diversity… always swinging.” ~ drummer Sonny Thornton
www.michaeljefrystevens.com