Stefon Harris, Theo Croker Share UpSwing Stage

Photo: Deneka Peniston

When Stefon Harris talks about music, he's not just describing a career but a way of experiencing the world. The four-time Grammy-nominated vibraphonist, composer, and educator has been celebrated as one of the most influential artists in contemporary jazz. With his long-standing band Blackout, a new chapter of his Sonic Creed project, an innovative ear-training app, and an upcoming performance at SFJAZZ, Harris manages multiple roles, all centered around the idea of sound as a means of human connection. (Click play to listen.)

Early Musical Influences

Harris traces his roots back to the Black church in Albany, New York, where his mother was a minister. The services gave him an early understanding of music as a communal practice, where harmony, testimony, and emotion are connected. At the same time, he pursued classical training from middle school through college, eventually earning a degree in classical percussion. He says the result is a language deeply tied to the culture he grew up in, while also embracing the wide potential of Western concert music. The common thread is feeling: the music must be soulful, and it should never be the same way twice.

His listening has always gone beyond genre boundaries. Stevie Wonder remains the guiding light, not only for harmonic complexity but for the belief that music exists to uplift people. Harris appreciates how Wonder’s songs are rooted in a clear sense of “why” – a moral and emotional purpose that goes beyond virtuosity. That ethic was reinforced closer to home by his early teacher Richard Al Bagley, who guided him from being the kid who played nearly every band instrument into a focused young artist willing to face demanding challenges week after week.

Life Signs Series

Sonic Creed Volume Two: Life Signs, Harris’s latest release with Blackout, stems from that sense of responsibility. For him, a new album isn’t just a routine milestone; it’s something he only undertakes when he feels he has a real message to share. Leading up to Life Signs, compositions came rapidly, and he saw it as a moment to capture. Some pieces had been written alongside the first Sonic Creed record and kept in reserve, so the second volume continues the sound world of its predecessor while also marking a new emotional chapter.

The title track, “Life Signs,” came from a private experiment with creative limits. Watching his young sons play for hours with a pair of red plastic cups, Harris became intrigued by how deeply imagination can flourish with simple materials. Applying that idea to harmony, he built the piece from small four-note patterns, a method that pushed him to find color and emotion within a tight framework. The result is music that feels open and exploratory, even though it's made from tiny building blocks, showing that innovation often means going deeper rather than always reaching outward.

Another important piece from the project, “I Know Love,” shows how personal his idea of harmony has become. The piece was created in memory of Eileen Lowenthal, a close family friend, whose relatives asked Harris to make music to help them remember her. To do this, he returned to a private practice: taking a single chord, living with it, and writing about the emotions it stirs. Over the years, he has built an internal library of sounds that suggest anxiety, comfort, longing, or peace. For “I Know Love,” he first wrote a poem and then selected chords to enhance the lyric’s feeling, creating a melody that could hold both the family’s grief and gratitude. A later version, set to appear on an album planned for 2026, will add strings and a vocal from Casey Benjamin, but even in its current instrumental form, the piece feels like a letter conveyed through tone color.

Harmony Cloud App

Harris’s interest in the emotional aspect of harmony has also led him into the field of technology. In 2013, he co-founded the Melodic Progression Institute and started developing Harmony Cloud, a mobile app aimed at doing for harmony what the metronome does for rhythm. While all musicians are familiar with the click of a metronome, there has never been a widely used tool that helps players experience the flow of chords in real time. Harmony Cloud creates endlessly diverse progressions from a selected set of chords, making practicing even a simple scale an exercise in responding to real musical context.

The idea draws inspiration again from his early church experiences. When someone stood to testify, unseen musicians would find the right chords, responding spontaneously as the story unfolded. Harmony Cloud aims to recreate that responsive presence in the practice room, inviting users to close their eyes and immerse themselves in the “space of sound” rather than just on the page. Teachers who tried an early beta version, Harris notes, began reporting that students were starting to feel harmony instead of merely reading it.

SFJAZZ Collective

San Francisco audiences know Harris not only from his own bands but from his six seasons with the SFJAZZ Collective, from 2007 to 2013. Each year, the ensemble chose a new composer to explore, alongside original pieces by the members, and the material arrived only weeks before the first rehearsal. The pressure to digest fresh, often complex music and then make it personal was enormous. Harris credits the group with forcing him to grow quickly and with giving him a model of how diverse compositional voices can coexist while each musician maintains a clear identity.

Stefon Harris & Blackout/Theo Croker Concert Info

Theo Croker. Courtesey photo.

That history makes his return to Miner Auditorium feel like a homecoming of sorts. For this visit, Harris and Blackout share a double bill with trumpeter Theo Croker as part of Terence Blanchard’s UpSwing series. Harris sees a kinship in Croker’s dedication to present-tense expression. In his view, the long-term value of art is that, centuries from now, people will look back at music to understand how we lived and what we cared about. Technical bravado matters far less than whether the work captures the emotional and cultural realities of its moment. Blackout has been committed to that mission for more than twenty years, and Harris describes both bands’ music as full of love, joy, and unapologetic soul.

Onstage at SFJAZZ, that soul will be expressed by a closely connected ensemble. Drummer Terreon Gully, Harris’s longtime friend and the group’s original percussion force, anchors the band alongside bassist Luques Curtis. Pianist Kenny Banks Jr., whose roots in the church mirror Harris’s own, brings a deep groove and vibrant color. Saxophonist Jaleel Shaw offers a versatile, contemporary voice on the front line, and vocalist Alexis Morrast – whom Harris considers an extraordinary emerging talent from Newark, NJ – joins as a special guest. He speaks of her with the enthusiasm of a mentor confident that he is witnessing the rise of a significant future talent.

TICKET INFO

Bay Area jazz fans will get to experience that presence firsthand when Stefon Harris and Blackout perform alongside Theo Croker at the Miner Auditorium on Saturday, November 29, at 7:30 p.m., as part of Terence Blanchard’s UpSwing series. If Harris has his way, the night will highlight diversity and serve as a living record of where the music – and the people creating it – stand right now.

Show details: Stefon Harris & Blackout / Theo Croker, November 29, 2025, Miner Auditorium, showtime 7:30 p.m. Tickets: https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/25-26/upswing-stefon-harris-theo-croker/

Download and explore Harmony Cloud (IOS app) here: https://www.stefonharris.com/harmony-cloud