Stefon Harris brings the sweet science of empathy to MSU

From the stomping swing of Lionel Hampton to the crystal silence of Gary Burton, vibraphone players have energized and enriched jazz for 100 years. But there’s a good reason no vibes players have taken part in the stellar Michigan State University jazz studies residency series, now in its ninth year. Vibraphones are unwieldy contraptions, notoriously difficult to master and jazz-based mallet percussion students are rare everywhere, including MSU.

Stefon Harris, this week’s artist in residence, changes that game. Total mastery of the vibes and marimba is only a point of departure for Harris, a thinker, researcher, motivator and composer whose ideas reverberate far beyond his chosen hardware.

“All these instruments are just tools,” Harris said. “It’s really about what you’re building. What I’m trying to build in our world is a deeper understanding and appreciation of the value of empathy.”

Harris and MSU jazz students will get together for master classes, rehearsals and a tour of high schools around the state this week, capped by a concert Friday at MSU’s Murray Hall.

The title of one of Harris’ early albums, “Black Action Figure,” fits him to a T. He’s a blur on the bandstand and a dynamo of a speaker. In 2017, he became director of jazz arts at the Manhattan School of Music. This week’s visit to MSU is part of a lifelong mission to spread the good word about the rewards and joys of creativity in general, and collective improvisation in particular.

 “I’ll tell you, the most beautiful experience on the bandstand is when you play an idea, and then you stop and you just listen, and you watch that idea transform in the hands of everyone else on the bandstand,” he said. “And by the time that idea comes back to you, it is so much bigger than anything you could have ever imagined.”

He believes that everyone holds the key to that door, not just gifted or trained artists.

“We think that an artist is such a unique and special human being, and we’re supposed to sit and watch that artist be special,” Harris said. “We’re always going to have brilliant artists, but it’s just as important that the average person continue to make things and appreciate the joy of creativity, because it affects how they treat other people.”

By his mid-30s, Harris, 48, was at the top of his art, touring the world with a variety of bands and winning numerous prizes and polls, but it all began to feel hollow. He felt like a hotshot surfer who craved a deeper understanding of the fathoms of ocean beneath him.

He spent over a decade analyzing thousands of chords and their psychological impact, filling dozens of notebooks with his observations.

“I approach aspects of music very much the same way a scientist would,” he said. “I’m constantly looking to discover the mechanics of how music works. It’s not something you can just read in a book.”

He co-developed a chord generating software app called Harmony Cloud, a tool for ear training for practicing musicians.

“I use all of my studies, my understanding, to look for the logic, look for the algorithm in what I’m feeling, so then it can be codified and shared with others,” he said.

In his own music, Harris is a spacewalking “harmonaut,” probing the mood and nuance of every chord he plays with maximum sensitivity. 

On Harris’s latest CD, “Sonic Creed,” he and his band, Blackout, pay tribute to one of the great vibraphone players in jazz, Bobby Hutcherson, with a lingering, crystalline re-imagining of Hutcherson’s Erik Satie-like “Now.”

On the same CD, Harris and Blackout refit a soulful jazz standard by Bobby Timmons, “Dat Dere,” with agitated strata of rhythm and crackling digital-age energy.

Harris calls it a “dance with legacy.”

“Think about what jazz musicians do night after night,” he said. “Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker did a good job of telling their stories. They don’t need us to retell their stories. We can celebrate their contributions to world culture by expressing ourselves, expressing the broader community, expressing the times.”

After a tough two years, Harris is more determined than ever to keep his many artistic, educational and entrepreneurial balls in the air, buoyed by the joy of getting back together with live audiences.

“I’ve managed to hold to most of my optimism,” he said. “For me, the last two years have been more of a values check with regard to what’s most important in my life — why I choose to perform, to reflect and understand what music brings to my life. When I got back to playing, I didn’t realize I needed it so much.”

MSU Jazz  Orchestras

$7-17

Stefon Harris, guest artist in residence

6:30 and 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25

Murray Hall

333 W. Circle Dr., East Lansing