Stephanie Stein Crease is a jazz historian, author, editor, and former Senior Jazz Coordinator for the Jazz Arts Program, Manhattan School of Music. Her books include Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America,  Gil Evans: Out of the Cool  ( ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award winner), and Duke Ellington: His Life in Jazz. She was literary editor for the Grammy-awarded Duke Ellington Centennial Edition. She was a 2020 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL, and 2018 Berger-Benny Carter-Berger Research Fellow at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University. She has participated in events at the National Museum of Jazz in Harlem, Institute of Jazz Studies, Saint Peter’s Church, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. She has been interviewed on WKCR, WBGO, BBC2 and other stations.