The Impact of a Piano

It all started with a piano.

After countless months of begging his parents to buy him the instrument, current music teacher Harold Stephan finally received the gift as a surprise in his room. “I started begging my parents when I was about 12 years old,” Stephan recalled. “One day, a piano ended up in my room, and the rest is history.” That ecstatic feeling that he felt that day all those years ago has carried him through a music career full of twists and turns—all the way to Stuyvesant.

After getting a degree in music from NYU back in the ‘90s, Stephan started his first job at Unique Recording Studio in NYC, working with artists like Phil Spector.

“I was lucky to get in there,” Stephan said. “Right away, they trusted me and began to throw me into these big sessions.” He would work long hours helping these musicians write, produce, and record their songs. Stephan remembered the studios as being “small and intimate, with racks and racks of gear everywhere.” In a time before computers were effective recording studios by themselves, synthesizers and instruments were stacked one on top of the other in a studio, so the artists could have thousands of sounds readily available at their fingertips.

However, Stephan didn’t feel like working in a recording studio was his calling. Due to the artists’ busy schedules, he would often end up working all-night sessions. Stephan ended up incredibly sleep-deprived during his time at this job. He reminisced that he “barely knew if [he] was coming or going after a night-time session.”

Eventually, Stephan left the studio and began to pursue a number of different music-related projects. He and his wife started a band called Amelia’s Dream, which has found a bit of success through film and television appearances. He helped rapper MattyB pen and produce his breakout hit “Hooked On You” (2013) alongside the guitarist of the Spin Doctors, whom he worked closely with for many years. He also worked on songs for big brand commercials, including Burger King, Hasbro, and Chevrolet.

However, everything changed when Stephan and his wife had a child in 2007. The long hours of the hit-making business simply couldn’t fit his schedule. “A hit could take 10 years of development, and I just didn’t have that kind of time anymore,” Stephan said. Luckily, this didn’t stop him from pursuing new opportunities with his career. He became a member of the orchestra for Broadway shows like The Lion King and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. After a number of jobs similar to these, Stephan got hired at a middle school. “I thought I could best continue in a path of pursuing songwriting and production if I started teaching,” Stephan explained. However, his first year of teaching was a trying one. He taught at a “difficult middle school, where the students took advantage,” he said. After his first year there, Stephan picked up a book.

This book, by Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt called “Teacher Man,” finds the author reflecting on his experience teaching high school students. During his time reading the book, Stephan wrote and submitted an application to become a music teacher at Stuyvesant, and had yet to hear back. The same day he got to the last chapter of the book, he got a call from a representative at Stuyvesant, calling him in for an interview. This final chapter of the book, titled “Coming Alive in Room 205,” discussed McCourt’s experience at Stuyvesant as a teacher. Stephan knew that this coincidence was too strong to not mean something. “I pretty much knew [I] was going to be hired by Stuyvesant. It just felt too synchronistic,” Stephan explained.

Four years later, Stephan considers his Stuyvesant career so far as overall, a very rewarding experience. He has taught hundreds of students how to play the guitar, read music, produce tracks, and countless other musical skills.

But what’s next for Stephan? He has a number of projects coming up in the near future. Most notably, he is currently in the process of turning the music storage room into a multi-booth recording studio area, with around a dozen individual studios. This project, in collaboration with AllMusic, will bring students from all over the city together to produce and write songs together, beginning in the fall of 2020.

Stephan’s story of coming to Stuyvesant is a wild journey full of twists and turns, but one thing’s for sure: he’s not stopping any time soon.