Stefon Quotes

#1. Italy has great food and Barcelona has great energy.

Stefon Harris

#2. One of the things I'm adamant about as a bandleader is not micromanaging. I'm an advocate for the concept of allowing everyone to be fully vested in what they're doing, so everyone contributes whatever they're inspired to contribute.

Stefon Harris

#3. Ultimately, what we do as musicians, I think of us as a type of emotional engineer. We essential take these sound waves, this sound, and we organize it into emotion, and that's how we connect with our audiences.

Stefon Harris

#4. I'm a spa person. Massages keep me relaxed, so I always try to make time for them when I tour.

Stefon Harris

#5. I love Amsterdam. The city is vibrant and alive. It's fresh and so open. It's definitely one of my favorite places.

Stefon Harris

#6. What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

Stefon Harris

#7. I grew in the inner city, listening to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, The Commodores - lots of soul music.

Stefon Harris

#8. I taught myself to read music at a very young age, so when I started to take lessons in school, the teachers used to give me other instruments to keep me busy, because I was more advanced than the other kids.

Stefon Harris

#9. I listen to a lot of singers, because I find phrasing to be one of the most essential elements of playing.

Stefon Harris

#10. Being at home with my family always inspires me. I find it hard to be inspired when I'm on the move. I'm not creative when I'm jet-lagged and sleeping in strange hotels.

Stefon Harris

#11. It's about being here in the moment, accepting one another and allowing creativity to flow.

Stefon Harris

#12. I've been a fan of Kenny Bob's for almost 20 years, and he's always made me laugh, and laugh hard! He is just, flat-out, a great entertainer!

Bob Goen

#13. Modern Americans are so exposed, peered at, inquired about, and spied upon as to be increasingly without privacy
members of a ;naked society and denizens of a goldfish bowl.

Edward V. Long

#14. It's easy to forget that promises can mean something.

Kit Rocha

#15. I don't really see huge barriers between any styles of music.

Stefon Harris

#16. Miles Davis is a major influence of mine in terms of the way that I am as a bandleader.

Stefon Harris

#17. If you listen to the way I speak, I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument, that concept comes through very clearly.

Stefon Harris

#18. I've been dreaming of a time when The English are sick to death of Labour and Tories And spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salutes him And will salute him forever.

Steven Morrissey

#19. The bandstand is an incredible space. It is really a sacred space. One of the things that is really sacred about it is that you have no opportunity to think about the future, or the past.

Stefon Harris

#20. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.

Victor Hugo