A 24-year-old piano prodigy, Jahari Stampley, has received probably the most prestigious awards in jazz. The competitors held by the Herbie Hancock Institute is extensively seen as anointing new stars.
Marcio Toledo
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Marcio Toledo
A 24-year-old piano prodigy, Jahari Stampley, has received probably the most prestigious awards in jazz. The competitors held by the Herbie Hancock Institute is extensively seen as anointing new stars.
Marcio Toledo
It has been fairly a birthday for Jahari Stampley. All proper across the identical time, he turned 24 and launched his first album, known as Nonetheless Listening. On Sunday, he received one of many greatest awards in jazz.
“It is simply overwhelming and in addition simply wonderful,” Stampley advised NPR after judges awarded him first place at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Worldwide Competitors. “I simply have a respect for everyone that participated within the competitors. These are all individuals I’ve at all times seemed as much as and beloved once I was rising up.”
Stampley was solely 14 when he began enjoying the piano. Quickly, he was profitable highschool competitions. After graduating from the Manhattan Faculty of Music in 2021, he toured with Stanley Clarke. However Jahari Stampley may’ve began his profession even earlier. His mom is a storied Chicago jazz determine. D-Erania Stampley runs a music faculty and has been nominated for Grammys in seven totally different classes.
“She by no means pressured me to play music,” Stampley says affectionately of his mom. “She simply silently would play data or do sure delicate issues to attempt to push me in that path. And I feel that is a giant a part of why I grew to become a greater musician, as a result of I genuinely like to play and I genuinely love music. I began it as a result of I beloved it, you already know?”
The esteem by which the youthful Stampley holds his mom is apparent. “She’s simply actually a genius,” he says with delight. “She is aware of the best way to fly planes. She simply grew to become a literal licensed pilot, and she or he simply did her first cross-country flight. She will be able to do something.”
The 2 lately toured collectively as a part of a jazz trio, with the elder Stampley enjoying synthesizers and saxophone, and Miguel Russell on drums and synths. Movies of mom and son performing collectively present a pair bespectacled and serene.
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This yr marks the primary time the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz has produced its worldwide competitors because the onset of the pandemic. The competitors has undergone varied rebrandings and locale modifications through the years, however continues to be extensively considered a launching pad for stars.
Critic Giovanni Russonello, who coated Stampley’s efficiency for The New York Instances, wrote that “together with his tall, wiry body hunched over the piano, [Stampley’s] fashion arrived like a lightning bolt…His enjoying felt unforced, as if powered from an inner engine. This was an artist you wished to listen to once more, and to know extra about.”
Stampley, whose ease with up to date idioms extends to his design of iPhone apps, says he hopes to mannequin his profession on heroes akin to Jon Batiste, who in 2022 grew to become the youngest jazz musician in latest reminiscence to win a Grammy for album of the yr, and on Herbie Hancock himself.
“I’ve at all times beloved somebody like Herbie,” Stampley mentioned. “Not solely can he embody the spirit of jazz and jazz itself, however he by no means limits himself right into a bubble of something that he creates artistically. And I really feel like for me as an artist, I simply at all times take into consideration enjoying truthfully. I feel I will not restrict myself to only jazz per se, however I need to develop past in the identical means that I really feel the those that I really like have performed, for instance, like Jacob Collier or Jon Batiste or, you already know, Herbie.”
Edited for the net by Rose Friedman. Produced for the net by Beth Novey.
