The creative surge and energy never stops. It feels like the impulse to make something happen or go on is at the soul-level core of the sax player and bandleader. Dayna Stephens is a creative force.
He is an educator, and I can only imagine the experience of being a student on the receiving end of such a flow of brilliance and kinetic music making and being of the music’s living culture.
He has a Toronto connection, having worked collaboratively with Toronto-based artists including Rich Brown and Anthony Fung.
Stephens is in the moment. Deeper than that even, he is in the pocket of the moment, part of the endless evolution of a groove of the genre and its music that is infectious and sweetly accessible at the same time.
Nepenthe is the name for an ancient Greek potion or elixir that could alter state of mind and allow one to forget about sorrow and pain. Imagine a music that could be like that kind of mind-altering elixir? Now hold on to that thought, because you’re imagining the Dayna Stephens experience.