Stephan Earl: Art of Expression

It's springtime once again in the land of blue skies, green palm trees and white beaches (aka Miami).  Being a transplanted New Yorker, the arrival of spring doesn't have quite the same impact for me in Miami as it did in the Big Apple.  However, universally springtime is celebrated as a time of bloom.  Since I'm a musician, I'll refer to this bloom as The Rite of Spring in honor of the timeless ballet by Igor Stravinsky.
Since the release of Origins last November, my world has been action packed with introducing and sharing my musical creation to the world.  Being an independent artist, I've learned that marketing your creation is a never ending, very time consuming, but limitlessly rewarding job.  The payoff for me has been the love and support I've received from so many friends and fans of my music, across the U.S. and around the world in over 50 countries.  Much of the exposure [...]

Inspired By Love - My Tribute to Valentine's Day

Inspired By Love is a photo collage piece I created some years ago as a tribute to Valentine's Day.  I was awakened early one Valentine's Day morning from a dream of which the muse was speaking to me of love, art and life.  She whispered that a saint who was watching over me would point me the way to complete my circle of love.
At that moment images began floating around in my mind.  I remembered a photograph I took in Antigua, Guatemala of the statue of San Pedro (Saint Peter).  I went outside and grabbed a copy of the New Times which is a local Miami paper and I began to cut out sections including Art, Music and Film.  I stopped by the local flower shop and purchased a red hibiscus, then went back home and assembled the different parts.  I took a photo of the work and titled it Inspired By Love.
Incidentally, later that year that I met a beautiful woman who is now my loving wife.  My muse is never wrong.  [...]

Recently the popular jazz website All About Jazz published an interview with me talking about my debut album "Origins", my approach to music and the state of Jazz.


Teachers and/or influences? 

I've been so fortunate to have great teachers such as Justin DiCoccio at LaGuardia H.S. in New York and Barry Weaver in my younger years who taught more than music notes on a page. They taught about feel and connecting emotionally with the music. My musical influences today compose and perform with the same emotional content. Artists such as Keiko Matsui, The Yellowjackets, Michael Brecker and Oystein Sevag just to name a few. 
Your sound and approach to music:
I approach music melodically. To me I love a melody that stays in your head. So if you hear one of my tunes and you can't get the melody out of your head, then I'm happy. I also love harmony, but I take a very improvised approach to harmony. So for example my melodies are mostly scored and transcribed by the time I record it and [...]

Five Ways to Support Your Favorite Indie Artist


Oh how times have changed.  Eighteen years ago I walked away from the music industry because I thought membership was clearly not based on artistic talent, but rather who you rub noses with or whether you happen to be the lucky 1% to get "discovered". Back in my old days in New York, I produced many talented artists who I watched struggle, scrap and scrape to be seen or heard by the right person - people who had bad attitudes and no time for someone who wasn't a protegé of an already famous act.
Oh how times have changed.  Now-a-days musicians have the ability to share their music with music-lovers all around the world.  This has been made possible with the advent of many new technologies, but most notably being the internet and social networking which has allowed potential fans access to the music and the musicians access to potential fans.  Gone is the necessity for that snobby A&R guru or the business-only [...]

Happenings at Stephan Earl Music this week:
This week was an exciting first week out of the gate in terms of radio exposure.  I spent some time during the Christmas and New Year Holidays farming out ORIGINS and almost immediately the efforts began to bear fruit.  Here are a few of the highlights:
Rhythm & Jazz Radio
This is San Antonio's Hotspot for Jazz and R&B 24/7. 

This week four songs from ORIGINS were featured including Origins, Le Cirque Enchante, Summer Rain and Sunflower. 
This hot Jazz station features National artists along with Regional and Independent ones according to Station Owner and Program director Mike Fernandez.
"I have a diverse playlist... you may hear Everette Harp one minute then the smooth straight-ahead jazz of local singer Ken Slavin then you may hear Sade's and Alicia Keys' latest then Eric Darius the next followed by crooner Slim Man to Houston's spectacularly talented Kyle Turner", said Fernandez.
This was a [...]