Considering jazz and hip-hop as a cross-politing genre and hoping to bring jazz to younger audiences, Meghan Stabile started a small business in June to produce a concert exploring the intersection of the two. He died in Valrico, Florida on the 12th. .. She was 39 years old.
Her grandmother, Maureen Freeman, said the cause was suicide. She said she recently moved to Valurico in the hope that she would help her fight her depression.
Stabile started producing the show while attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. She decided to call them Revive Dalive. This is a name that was interested in helping jazz musicians perform live hip-hop artists in a time when turntablists dominated.
“It’s an organic hybrid. Jazz is in the DNA of hip-hop,” she told The Boston Globe in 2012.
After moving to New York in 2006, she continued to host Revive Da Live events, form Revive Music Group, produce shows, create an online forum called Revivalist, and partner with the renowned jazz label Blue Note Records. And released some albums. ..
Stabile generally worked outside the mainstream of jazz and booked shows in small clubs, but she gradually became more powerful in New York.
“In the last year and a half, she’s been around the city. She’s booking, promoting, cajoling, advising, and grazing young musicians. Many of them are still looking for ways. I am. “
Don Was, now President of Blue Note Records, told the Times that he met Stabile for the first time when he joined the label as chief creative officer two years ago and went looking for hot new jazz. ..
“I started going online for four or five hours at night,” he said.
“And always,” he continued. “All the threads I was following were back on Meghan’s site, so every night she seemed to be at the center of energy.”
She also produced shows in Boston and elsewhere. As she explained to The Globe, her goal was to bring the jazz scene to life and connect it with the hip-hop-learned audience. For example, the 2012 Revive Music Show in Berklee, called “Hip-Hop 1942,” features an ensemble of jazz tunes and shows how hip-hop artists sampled it.
“It’s important to respect the musical tradition, and we still have shows to do it,” she told Globe. “But we also need to respect today’s music and make it more relevant.”
Blue Note posted a homage to her on Twitter.
“She was loved by hard-working musicians. She was an avid advocate of jazz, building a vibrant scene around music and providing a platform for many valuable artists. . “
Meghan Erin Stabile was born on July 26, 1982 in Grand Prairie, Texas, to Gina Marie Skidds. Her father was not part of her upbringing and she was raised primarily by Mr. Freeman and his aunt in Dover, New Hampshire. Her relationship with her mother, who died last year, was difficult, she told the Times in 2013. Some kind of terrible quality.
“I was kicked out of four schools — three high schools and one junior high school,” she said. “For the fight. I experienced a lot, and I did it. It didn’t break me. So by always having that strength, all types of situations I was able to get over it. “
She enrolled in Berkeley as a singer and guitarist, but Freeman said in a telephone interview that she couldn’t overcome her stage phobia and quickly focused on the music business. She also got a job as a bartender at Wally’s Cafe, a jazz club in Boston, and began to absorb her jazz scene.
She started producing, and her grandmother said, “I have nothing but a brain and a pencil,” adding that she especially liked helping up-and-coming musicians, even though she didn’t have much money.
“She did everything she did, but it was always scrambled,” Freeman said.
As Stabile’s reputation grew, some of her shows took place in good-sized venues. For example, in 2013 she booked a 19-piece Revive Big Band in the Highland Bowl in Manhattan, where dancer Savion Glover appeared side by side. However, such an event believed in the operation of one of her staff.
“The illusion outside is amazing,” she told the Times. “Everyone thinks we are this huge business. But look. I’m sitting here.”
In 2013, Ms. Stabile signed a contract to produce and curate Blue Note records, and released “Revive Music Presents: Supreme Sonacy Vol. 1” in 2015.
“The idea of a modern jazz lineage that is, of course, hip-hop savvy, rather than math, influences much of this music,” Nate Chinen wrote in a review of the record at the Times. I am.
In recent years, Stabile has reduced production activities with an emphasis on his own health. but, 2017 interview She said on the website CQP that she thought her years of work helped connect two different worlds.
“When I first started promoting the show, I had to learn how to promote it, especially to the heads of jazz, especially hip-hop,” she said. “I had to find a way to seduce them. If I called it a jazz show, hip hop heads didn’t buy tickets. If I called it a hip hop show , Jazzhead wouldn’t buy a ticket.
“So I had to create a new story early on. When we took them to the room and they listened to the music, we couldn’t deny how fresh it was. . “
In addition to her grandmother, Ms. Stabile is survived by her brother Michael Skidds and her sister Caitlyn Chaloux.
Freeman said Stabile had a long-term goal inspired by her own difficulties, although she reduced production activities.
“She wanted to promote a wellness center for jazz musicians. They could go to her center when they didn’t have a gig and were having a hard time,” she said. Told.
