Emma Grace Stephenson is an Australian pianist and songwriter who has shared the stage with prolific musicians and bands such as Ingrid and Christine Jensen (Canada/US), Gian Slater, the Sirens Big Band and Sandy Evans. Her music combines rhythmic, harmonic, and improvisatory elements from her experience as a modern jazz pianist, with folk-pop songwriting influences.
Emma is the latest recipient of the ‘Jann Rutherford Memorial’ award for young women in the Australian jazz scene. This award facilitated a collaboration with the award winning Australian vocalist, Gian Slater, culminating in performances for the Melbourne and Sydney Women’s Jazz Festivals, and a recording at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) studios in late 2016. An album of this entitled ‘Where the Rest of the World Begins’, released on the label 54records, is now available.
Emma is currently enrolled as a full time PhD student at the Sydney Conservatorium of music, under the supervision of Dr. Simon Barker, where she is in engaged in creative, practice-led research related to developing her artistic practice. Emma has studied with celebrated Australian jazz pianists including Marc Hannaford, Judy Bailey and Matt McMahon, and international artists including Aaron Goldberg, Ted Rosenthal and Jean-Michel Pilc. As an undergraduate student at the Sydney Conservatorium of music, she was awarded the 2012 Corinna Taylor Memorial Prize, and the Jacek Chrowtowski award for jazz pianists in both 2015 and 2016. For the Conservatorium of Music’s centenary in 2015, Emma was interviewed on behalf of the jazz course with Mike Dalton on Channel 9 news. She graduated with First Class Honours in April 2016.