Meghan Stabile, jazz impresario, founder, president, and CEO of Revive Music Group, and an executive producer at Blue Note Records has passed away at the age of 39. NPR reported that the cause of death was suicide.
Stabile attended Berklee College of Music where she created Revive Music Group as a vehicle to help popularize jazz, specifically hip-hop-influenced jazz, among a wider, hipper audience. In 2006, she moved to New York City, where she made an indelible mark on the music industry, aiding artists’ developing careers and helping to produce successful collaborations between musicians including Roy Ayers and Pete Rock, as well as Mos Def and the Robert Glasper Experiment. She also provided a venue for musical exploration with the Revive Da Live concert series and highlighted emerging talent in Revive’s online publication, The Revivalist.
Though she had taken a step back from the nightly fray of the NYC jazz scene in recent years, she had begun to shift her focus to mental health and wellness in the space. On January 12th, 2020, as part of NYC’s Winter Jazzfest, Stabile participated in a panel called “Artists Sharing Stories of Recovery From Substance Abuse, Addiction, & Depression/Mental Health” along with various musicians. The night prior, she hosted a wellness benefit billed as Revive Yo Feelings. Ahead of that show, Stabile spoke about her first-hand experience with childhood sexual assault and the devastation she had felt when her family did not believe her.
“It was an experience that taught me what neglect felt like, what betrayal felt like, what abandonment felt like,” she said, per Downbeat, adding that she had turned to drugs and alcohol, and finally a suicide attempt, to cope with that trauma.
Stabile’s impact on the industry is widely recognized among today’s top jazz, funk, and hip-hop musicians, and her tragic passing has resulted in an outpouring of love on social media.
“To my lovely Meghan,” wrote renowned bassist Thundercat, “thank you for everything you did while you were here. Without your work, care and love a lot of us musicians wouldn’t be in the places we are now.”
Keyboardist Nigel Hall echoed a similar sentiment: “My heart is broken today. my dear friend Meghan was one of the first people to believe in me and give me an opportunity to be around people I looked up to, vouched for me without even knowing me, and her and I had many nights where she talked me off the cliff when i wanted to quit. She is responsible for a lot of the best shit we know in the scene. I will forever be grateful to have known her, laughed with her, had her shoulder to cry on and now, and her memory will live on with me.”
The Roots drummer Questlove also shared words about Stabile’s influence on the music scene. “Meghan was a true artist,” he wrote. “A lover of music in its rawest essence. Gave her all in keeping the culture alive. For you people who enjoyed those magical moments watching Glasper/Dave/Hodge/all the new jazz & #revivethelive events of the past 15 years we lost a gem & a champion in music.”
Jazz drummer Nate Smith responded to Questlove in a comment that simply read, “damn. that’s all i got 😢.”
In 2013, Stabile was profiled in the New York Times, who called her “a woman on a curious mission: to make jazz matter to the hip-hop generation, and to do so as a young woman in a jazz world dominated by older men, at a time when both jazz itself and the recording industry feel decreasingly relevant.” She arrived in New York in 2006 with the goal of radically changing the face of the city’s jazz scene, and in just a few years, she managed to do just that.
“I said what I was going to do, and I did exactly what I said,” she reflected. “And people have seen that now.”
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If your life is currently in danger, call 911 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255). If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs immediate help, find information, support, and services via the National Institute of Mental Health or Backline.