Stephon Harris

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/30/822024071/stefon-harris-vibraphonist-educator-thinker-teaches-empathy-from-the-bandstand

"Empathy is essentially the science of understanding," Harris says. "And that's something that's necessary in local communities; it's necessary in elementary schools, on a collegiate level and in a corporate boardroom."

"Music was there to amplify the pain that we were going through as a family and as a community," Harris told the crowd at Clement's Place before the show started. "Someone would stand up, Sister Johnson or whoever it would be, and testify. And maybe she said, 'My brother was sick last week and I want to let you know he's feeling better.' And you know what I mean? That G minor would just come out of nowhere."

And as the organ chord swelled under her testimony, he learned that music was not purely for entertainment, it had a purpose.

"Stefon, to me, approaches every musical situation trying to contribute both to what's happening between the musicians on stage, but also to reflect back to the audience something profound," says Wayne Winborne, director of the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers and a longtime friend of Harris. "The term he uses is empathy. I tend to talk about it as humanity."