Stephen Philip Harvey is consistently fresh and inventive. When it sounds beautiful, that’s OK with him, but it’s also fine if his imagination leans toward dissonance, funk, or sci-fi.
Stephen Philip Harvey is not a typical jazz musician — and for many reasons. One reason is that he is primarily a composer and arranger, rather than a virtuoso soloist and improviser, who writes mainly because that is what jazz musicians are expected to do.
Most importantly, Harvey is the kind of composer whose output is consistently fresh and inventive, without necessarily being self-consciously cutting-edge. When it sounds beautiful, hey, that is okay with him, but it is equally okay if his imagination takes him toward dissonance or funk or, well, science fiction. His musical and personal background encompasses all these elements, including singing in church choirs and learning to play the classical clarinet.
His latest recording, Multiversal: Live at Bop Stop, is now available, featuring a full 17-piece jazz orchestra. I am confident that you might only hear a handful of more accomplished big band arrangements in 2025 — check out the super-hip chart for “Mind Your Weather, Weather Your Mind” for a gorgeous back-and-forth conversation between sections, swinging all the while.
Stephen Philip Harvey’s vocabulary of jazz composition is vast and consistently engaging, sweeping from classic 1950s Count Basie sounds to the present, and incorporating the colors and innovations of Gil Evans, Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, and more. Do you want to hear a snarling jazz guitar solo that bends strings and minds as a big band colors it and goads it upward? “Mind Your Weather” and other Harvey tunes contain that among many other glories.
I spoke with Harvey a few nights after hearing his octet perform at Washington, DC’s Blues Alley. The octet — trumpet, trombone, alto and tenor sax, plus guitar, piano, bass, and drums — play a unique book of arrangements that have also been documented on records like 2023’s Elemental. (Harvey has also recorded some tasty funk/jazz with a quintet: Sphinx.) During the show, he explained that the Octet’s latest set of compositions is primarily inspired by Black literature that Harvey had been reading. They were expansive, but Harvey’s writing is also inspired by his love of comic books.
Our conversation reflected the bright and positive imagination of this impressive composer. It is no surprise that Harvey has been a music educator at Salisbury University in Eastern Maryland, and that he currently works as the Music Director at WESM, a jazz and blues station in that area, producing programs and podcasts focused on Black American Music and curating live performances.
Though Stephen Philip Harvey is not part of the not-so-distant New York scene, his music and impact shine just as brightly.
You aren’t a jazz musician whose story is well-known. Tell me about how you grew into a passionate musician. You did not have a conventional “jazz school” education, correct?
From the age of four or five, I was singing in church, and I continued through high school. There was so much music happening in my small church in Western Pennsylvania. I learned to love singing four-part harmony from my mom and my grandfather. When he was dying, we would end every visit to the ICU with a hymn.
My mom was also a fan of 1970s and 1980s pop, funk, and neo-soul. Though jazz, rock, and hip-hop are now the musical styles I most engage with, I didn’t grow up on those things! It was the video game Guitar Hero that got me into rock, actually. I started listening to hip-hop only in my 20s, and I developed an interest in punk music through my friends.
I got seriously engaged in classical music through clarinet training as a young person. Though I played saxophone for two years in my high school band, there was no emphasis on improvisation — can you believe it? On the field with the marching band, I would get yelled at for “noodling”. My band director started yelling at me the names of jazz clarinetists: “Ken Peplowski!”, “Buddy DeFranco!”. He was urging me to look them up, check them out. I already knew Benny Goodman, but I barely knew any saxophonists.
I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher, so I studied music education at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. I majored in voice and went balls to the wall on private lessons.
Through college, I was always in a primarily classical environment. There was a real difference in values regarding how you might learn and hear jazz. My college professor in music history called jazz and hip-hop noise or jungle music — a different set of values! I was already composing music, but for wind bands, not jazz. Then I took a class in arranging and writing for a jazz combo.
It was only at the end of college that I discovered I liked improvisation. I had been playing saxophone as well as clarinet, but I did not have the experience of seriously studying jazz improvisation. I wasn’t transcribing and analyzing famous solos, all of that, but I did realize I wanted to write and play jazz. I thought I was a pretty good saxophone player and didn’t know how serious I needed to get.
I got into one graduate school for jazz, Youngstown State, which took a chance on me. I did lots of transcription and study, getting my jazz studies degree. Then I felt comfortable both as a saxophonist and composer.
Do you consider yourself a composer and arranger above all else? The imagination in your arrangement of Wayne Shorter‘s “Witch Hunt” for Octet was impressive. Your tunes showed just as much daring and sonic variety. How did you come to see yourself through this lens rather than just as a saxophonist?
I was into composing from the start. I didn’t realize, as an undergraduate, that I was deficient as a player. I know now that I’m not the best saxophonist.
I approach and love big band and jazz-orchestrated music as a bandleader. In that context, I’m divorced from being a player. Not to discount my octet, trio, quintet records, where I do perform, but writing and arranging original music is my passion.
Here is one of my pet peeves about big band records: If it’s mostly standards and not original music, I become uninterested. I come to a large ensemble for opportunities for counterpoint, color, and the complexity that a 17-piece group creates. I want the music to be cinematic and fresh. I feel that with my first jazz orchestra album, Smash, I received comments saying it wasn’t a “traditional” jazz ensemble record. That’s great with me.
Though I sing a lot, I don’t see myself as a singer, but because of my vocal training and my relationship to melody, I want to create singable melodies when I write tonally. So, my music is typically approachable even if it sounds new.
There are a handful of jazz composers/arrangers in this century who loom as the Big Dogs — Darcy James Argue, Maria Schneider, and John Hollenbeck. Where do you fit in, as you look ahead? Is it hard to imagine taking a spot in that pantheon?
It is so frustrating to hear people say that the big bands are dead. There is so much! Javier Nero leads a great band here in the DC area.
I don’t know if “being a top person” has ever been my goal. Is my goal to receive good reviews and reception? My goal is to write and get the music out there. I love that feeling of just finishing the composing itself. Then it gets played — that’s incredible, but that is almost all of it in terms of my satisfaction.
I want the music to be fun. Listen to my tune “Ain’t No Sidekick” on the new album, for example. Some people want to know sales/streams, but to me, just breaking even on the production costs is a total win. I just want to have big band shows and connect with people.
There are 17 musicians from your area that you can connect to, and I want to come to town and give them fresh music to play. I love it when people say, “This is my first jazz show, and I came because I love comic books”! For this tour around Multiversal, I am putting together a regional big band in every different place. Next summer, I am even going to Comic-Con in San Diego!
I want to keep connecting with people. It’s Black American music, but it’s also just American music, it’s also just music.
There are a handful of older musicians who are significant influences on today’s composers and arrangers – Thad Jones and Bob Brookmeyer. Who else matters to you?
There are a couple of figureheads I was exposed to by Dr. Dave Morgan at Youngstown State who are important to me: Ryan Truesdale and the Gil Evans Project, for example. Ryan studied with Bob Brookmeyer, and I know that Darcy James Argue was part of that cohort. I also love the arranging and composing of Jim McNeely — what an amazing discography. The European big bands thrill me, with Vince Mendoza being a top influence.
Of course, Thad Jones and Duke Ellington. Sammy Nestico, Gil Evans. They all have different things that are so good. That is where I get the inspiration to explore my own sound. Also, Billy Strayhorn, who is from Pittsburgh! I admire a lot of Pittsburgh musicians, being from the area.
I know you and your wife are both music educators. Talk about your relationship to music education as a teen and now as a professional musician.
There are two reasons that all musicians need to be educators. That is true in all fields: the tradition can’t remain stagnant.
Education about he past informs the present and helps build the future. When we say “education”, we mean many things. Educational experiences can occur in various environments and with individuals of different ages. If education is limited to one kind of place or for the young, we are failing it. If the education model is that you can only learn for a certain time, then people won’t be inquisitive enough to keep learning. All the artists I like express an inquisitiveness that points to learning across many places and a complete lifespan.
I associate big band jazz with a particular tradition. Yet your writing has elements of the New Jazz: complex rhythms and time signatures, advanced harmonies, and flirtation with playing outside the standard changes. What is your relationship with the jazz vanguard? What do you want it to be?
Great question. There is cutting-edge jazz composition and arrangement that I love, such as trombonist Jacob Garchik’s album Clear Line, a big band album that eschews the rhythm section. Comparatively, I’m not innovative! When you point out how I’m doing innovative things, I barely even know I’m doing it. I don’t necessarily know that I think too hard about this.
I had a publicist say I needed to put together something that is “marketable”, but I am not trying to do that. I’m writing to express an aesthetic and a sound. I’m trying to tap into some stuff extra-musically to express ideas about literature and other stories. Along the way, I sometimes get to something outside what is expected. I don’t know how to classify anything in my music, but I know that others will classify it for me!
I say and use the word “jazz”, but I don’t really like labels anymore. I don’t know how it fits into “innovation”, but I know it wouldn’t be possible without “tradition”. I don’t think I’m being “innovative”, but I am trying to translate Black Panthers‘ power into this musical tradition!