Stephen Philip Harvey Awarded Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant; August Mini-Tour Marks Octet Swan Song and Premiere of The Pen is Mightier

Saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Stephen Philip Harvey has been awarded a 2025 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant, supported by the Doris Duke Foundation. The award will fund the creation, performance, and eventual recording of a new extended work, to be developed and premiered through 2027.

The grant marks a powerful milestone in Harvey’s artistic evolution. Over the past year, his compositional voice has embraced a new focus—a programmatic celebration of Black American culture, drawing inspiration from literature, history, and spiritual traditions. It’s a shift Harvey sees as both personal and political: “In a moment when African American culture—and others—face erasure and neglect, I feel called to create work that preserves, produces, and proliferates our histories, voices, and visions.”

The first fruit of this new direction is The Pen is Mightier, an eight-movement suite for jazz octet inspired by the writings of Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, August Wilson, Amanda Gorman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and other pillars of Black storytelling. The music reimagines their words through Harvey’s genre-bending lens, blending jazz with funk, gospel, hip-hop, and contemporary classical textures.

The Pen is Mightier will premiere this August on a mini-tour featuring Harvey’s octet, SPH8, with performances at:

• Friday, August 1, Blu Jazz+ (Akron, OH)

• Sunday, August 3, Sandy Reigel Theatre (Rochester, PA)

• Tuesday, August 12 Blues Alley (Washington, D.C.)

The tour also coincides with the vinyl reissue of Elemental (Live), the group’s acclaimed 2024 concert recording.

These performances represent a culminating chapter for the octet. Following this tour, Harvey will pivot his focus toward his seventeen-piece Stephen Philip Harvey Jazz Orchestra, carrying his large-ensemble explorations forward into 2026.

“This is a kind of swan song for the octet,” says Harvey. “The Pen is Mightier captures the heart of what we’ve built together—narrative-driven music that I hope begs the listener to dive deeper into the stories or venture towards new ones. I’m proud to send it out into the world with this band.”

For tickets, updates, and more, visit stephenpharvey.comor follow @stephenpharvey on Instagram.