Margaret "Peggy" Stern is an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist and synthesizer

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

 player.

Stern studied piano at the Eastman School of Music

Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

, achieving her bachelor's in 1968, then attended the New England Conservatory of Music

New England Conservatory of Music

The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...

 (1968–70). Her initial training was classical, and her interest in improvisation was sparked by her experience with figured bass

Figured bass

Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones, in relation to a bass note...

 realizations in early music

Early music

Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...

. Her first major gigs as a jazz musician came in the early 1980s, playing in an octet with Julian Priester

Julian Priester

Julian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and composer.He has played with many artists including Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock.-Biography:...

 and Richie Cole

Richie Cole (musician)

Richie Cole is a jazz alto saxophonist composer and arranger born in Trenton, New Jersey, U.S. and is a graduate of Ewing High School, Ewing New Jersey....

; she also worked in R&B groups and Latin music ensembles during this decade. In the early 1990s she worked often with Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

 and played with Vic Juris

Vic Juris

Victor E. Jurusz, Jr., known professionally as Vic Juris is an American jazz guitarist.Juris played with Lyn Christie early in the 1970s and made his first recordings with Eric Kloss in 1975. Soon after he joined Barry Miles 's group, remaining with Miles well into the 1980s...

 among others, in addition to leading her own band, with whom she recorded several albums.

Stern taught at the Cornish Institute in Seattle from 1981 to 1989 and at SUNY-Purchase from 1991.

Discography

• Pleiades (Philology Records, 1993)
• Fuchsia (Koch Records
  Koch Records
  E1 Music , the primary subsidiary of E1 Entertainment LP, is the largest independent record label in the United States. It is also distributed by the Universal Music Group in Europe under the name E1 Universal...
  
  , 1997)
• Room Enough (Koch, 1999)
• Actual Size (Koch, 2000)
• Estrella Trio (2006)