Nick Stefanacci’s single “Midnight Affair” is about a couple that never actually gets together. The track runs the chase all night long and never lets it land. That’s the whole premise, and it’s a good one, because the song itself sounds like it’s circling something too. Four minutes and twenty-six seconds, built on the shuffle and polish of Quincy Jones’ golden era, with Maceo Parker’s grit worked into the low end.
It’s the lead single off his album “Right Here, Right Now,” released the same day, and it’s the most hands-on he’s been on a record. Stefanacci wrote, arranged, mixed, mastered, and produced this one himself, top to bottom, which is a different kind of undertaking given how much of his career has been built through collaboration. Stefanacci treats albums like time capsules, snapshots of wherever he happens to be in his life when he makes them. This one traces back to walking through European cities and letting the atmosphere do the writing before he’d put down a single note. Ask him the ideal way to hear “Midnight Affair” and he’ll tell you: a glass of wine, a French corner bistro, nothing else required.
He didn’t do it entirely alone. Tony Lindsay, the former frontman of Santana, shows up on the album, along with trombonist Ozzie Melendez, who currently plays with Bruce Springsteen, and Miles Gilderdale, lead guitarist of Acoustic Alchemy. It’s a lineup that fits the caliber of people Stefanacci has worked with throughout his career. He started performing at 16, alongside a young Derek Trucks, back when Trucks himself was still an emerging name in Southern rock. From there, Stefanacci kept building, playing with the Four Tops, Ja Rule, Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, and Latin Grammy winner Diamante Eléctrico’s band along the way.
He’s also played saxophone on the series finale of NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle” with Brooke Shields, headlined New York City’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, and performed at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the kind of stages that don’t usually go to session players. “Right Here, Right Now” is out now, following his earlier release, “En Fuego EP.”
Off stage, he founded The Promise Festival back in 2016, a charity event benefiting The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and runs Sweet Lion Music Group, where he produces and develops other artists rather than just fronting his own material. It’s the kind of dual role that keeps him behind the glass as often as he’s in front of a mic. He ends every live show the same way, no matter the city or the crowd: tells everyone to get home safe and spread love.
The Iridium date on September 25 is billed as a Birthday Bash, with Stefanacci sharing the stage with pianist Jay Rowe for a set built around original material and fan favorites. It’s a smaller, more intimate format than the fireworks shows and Thanksgiving Day Parade crowds he’s used to, just two musicians working off each other’s improvisation in one of New York’s better-known jazz rooms.
He’ll be doing that in person plenty this year, with tickets to the Iridium show available through the venue. For everything else, he’s on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Apple Music, YouTube, and his tour dates are up on Bandsintown.
Stefanacci’s own words sum it up best: “Midnight Affair” is just “that quintessential Quincy Jones/MJ shuffle magic.” Twenty years in, he’s still chasing it, and he doesn’t seem in any hurry to catch it.
