Biography:

"Regarded as a genius-level musician by many of the people we played his music for around the country in the last year, Stephen DiJoseph, is a fascinating and diverse artist who has a depth of talent that I am not sure even he has fully explored. Making him an even more interesting and compelling story is his successful adaptation to a rare condition called Tourette Syndrome, that he hasn't merely tamed, but in some respects has seemed to incorporate into his art and performance. To see Stephen perform live is frankly like watching a juggernaut on piano. To realize he is also a polished contemporary singer-songwriter-guitarist as well as an experimental jazz and Celtic performer just adds to his mystique. This guy might be the most amazing discovery we ever made... "
Brian Austin Whitney
JPFolks International Music Network

Stephen DiJoseph is an artist who pushes the envelope of versatility. "Stephen is a sound experience" says Lisa Ferrari, Philadephia-based Wiffledust Concerts Series producer. "My influences are fairly diverse" says DiJoseph "so to bring together different musical worlds and make them welcome under one roof feels normal to me."

An award-winning instrumentalist/singer-songwriter/performance artist, Stephen was a nominee in the Philadelphia City Paper Music Awards 2000, and a 1st place winner in the JPFolks International Music Awards. His solo piano CD PIANOPOETRY has been featured on PRI¹s Echoes, syndicated on over 170 radio stations. Stephen has been featured on WHYY Philadelphia Public Radio¹s Radiotimes with Marty Moss-Coane, and Maine Public Radio's Main Things Considered with Charlotte Renner, discussing his music, Tourette Syndrome and creativity.

DiJoseph is one of those rare animals, able to offer up captivating and truly original songs with a "soulful" voice and then, in the blink of an eye, mind-bending instrumentals that leave you feeling "like you found something you didn't know you needed." In concert, he "frames" his music with a hyperactive sense of humor, visual commentary, and auditory surprises: the story of his "synaptic adventure"... Tourette-inflected fusionary passion fashioned from the heart of experience. Audiences are entertained, excited, toyed with, awe-inspired and touched to the soul by this appropriately called "unique" artist.

Stephen's latest developments are a Latin-jazz piano arrangement of a Chopin etude (no.14), and a powerful acoustic ballad entitled "Straight and Narrow" on which he sings and plays acoustic guitar using his own "C" tuning.

DiJoseph has been compared to such artists as varied as Peter Gabriel and Kenny Loggins ...Michael Hedges and Keith Jarrett. Classical and jazz piano studies, Celtic, funk and rock bands, and multimedia collaborations have all helped to shape DiJoseph's eclectic style, a style that Al Foster of Songwriter Magazine called "accessible brilliance."

Note:  Steve is a recognized finalist in the Philadelphia Songwriter's Contest with over 140 applicants from 20 states. Congratulations, Steve!

An ongoing wordly experience

So... If by now you've seen me in concert you know that I have, as one recent concert-goer put it, a... "twitchy"... style. Well....OK. So I tend to play with words, to act obsessively and compulsively. To unabashedly joke-about and jerk-about. You got a problem with that? Well, I certainly would! That is, if I were one who suffers from motion sickness and gets dizzy very easily, I would at LEAST expect Ticketmaster to provide Dramamine with the tickets I bought for the show. Or maybe the venue owners could provide seatbelts!

OK. So here's the skinny. It all began when that little itty-bitty fertilized Stephen-to-be cell divided into two, then four, then...etc. Somewhere in there a gene known as the "Gts" gene shows up and gets passed on by that relay team known as 'HEREDITARY'. These guys have been running an immeasurably long race through countless generations of humans and other species, carrying from generation to generation all kinds of traits and characterisTICS ;) This gene, passed on by males as well as females, is known to produce many less-than-desirable chemical-neural dispositions: Anxiety, Depression, Dyslexia, OCD, ADD, ADHD, DSL (oops...sorry. That's Verizon's doing) and, yours truly, Tourette Syndrome.

The list is long and since Tourette is a syndrome, it has many faces. The most popular of which is, you guessed it: THE CURSING! Now, it is typical of the media to emphasize what only 15% ...that's right..read my lips...FIFTEEN PERCENT of the TS population has as a symptom. It's called Coprilalia. Not to be confused with a cop with a shalailee OR the urge to curse at a cop, which is as common as sunshine. It stimulates a very primal and specially assigned-for-curse-words part of the brain. Well...it could be! Actually, you could think of it like a person who's missing the filter in their brain that keeps them from blurting out such colorful lingo or no brakes on the mouth... inhibitory functions malfunctioning. Anywho, it drives people in that fifteen percentile to curse for no apparent reason. Have you seen the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry hires a chef for his new restaurant who has TS with this particular trait? Well, you should.

I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome at age 16, ten years after I first exhibited symptoms. Ah yes, I recall that fated first Christmas visitation by that annoying and persistent urge to test the limits of a Christmas ball on the tree. It became my self-appointed position to test the structural integrity of such items as well as a number of my mom's favorite and strategically-placed figurines throughout the house. Needless to say, over the years I learned to pack a hefty Krazy Glue gun and became rather expert at reassembling those objects that did not withstand my "pressure testing" or, at least, I tried to make them APPEAR unbroken. You should have seen my mom's face when she'd go to pick up a statue to dust or relocate it, only to be left holding but a portion of the aforementioned item.

Projects:

Pianopoetry...
Solo piano... jazz and classical meet quirk and funk. The music that defines Stephen's particular sound. Pianopoetry can be described as a "conversation," an interaction between playful hands... a translation of one individual's "synapTIC adventure"..... melodies and rhythms arguing, laughing, and engaging each other. At a pianopoetry concert, Stephen combines his "keyboard wizardry" with a hyperactive sense of humor, occasional spoken words, and elements of aural surprise.

Urban Celtic...
Traditional Celtic and American folk music with jazz, classical and contemporary influences. Mary Kay Mann plays wood and silver flutes, Irish whistle, Celtic harp, and sings. Stephen plays keyboards, acoustic guitar, dumbek (middle-eastern hand drum), and sings.

Acoustic Fire...
Songwriting...both solo and band... drawing on influences from folk, pop, and rock over the last 30 years. Lyrical thrust: at first look, life is simple so.... look again.

The Whirld Music Trio...
This is a collaborative project that has developed from years of experimentation. The music/sounds is/are an improvised spontaneous reaction. And, yes.... the spelling of "whirld" is intentional. It describes the rave-world-techno-ambient-jazz-pop-kitchen sink, humor, and somewhat unpredictable audio-visual environment that this collection of lunatics create.

WMT is comprised of guitar w/ effects, dumbeks, djembas, a variety of percussion, electronic drums, keyboards, vocals, spoken words, overtone singing and sometimes, song . The sum and sound of this trio is, as the saying goes, far greater than its individual members. CD and video are in the making. However, it is the live performance that you will not want to miss.