If there's one thing Stephen Harvey enjoys almost as much as jazz, it's superhero stories.
“Outside of music, I live and breathe superheroes,” Harvey, a Rochester-raised composer and bandleader said. “It had been a long-time idea to combine these two passions into a project."
Harvey has written nine original compositions, all inspired by comic book/popular culture superheroes, archetypes and tropes.
More specifically, "the compositions are influenced by the personas, powers and stories, and what I think would best represent them in the jazz orchestra format," said the 2010 Rochester High grad who now lives and teaches in Salisbury, Md. "For example, the title piece, 'Smash,' contains a lot of dark, chromatic harmonies that are accented by the full band. This would represent those big drag-out fights between two super-strength brutes. Each punch by the big band would be a smash from that battle. Or maybe a piece based on the power of flight? The piece “Zephyr” moves like the wind. The entire band is in this bright harmonic palate moving through time together at a fast pace, almost like we’re flying close to the sun.