Mark Stryker Biography
Mark Stryker is an award-winning author, journalist, critic, and filmmaker in Detroit. He was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2020. His 2019 book, Jazz from Detroit (Univ. of Michigan Press), was named Jazz Book of Year by the Jazz Times Critics Poll and Jazz Journalists Association Awards. Stryker wrote and produced the documentary film The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit (Magic Circle Productions, 2025), which was seen at nine film festivals across North America and Europe and is currently streaming on Prime Video, YouTube TV, and Google Play. Stryker was an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press from 1995-2016, covering classical music, jazz, visual arts, and cultural news and winning a dozen national awards for reporting, writing, and criticism. He is also the author of Destiny: 100 Years of Music, Magic, and Community at Orchestra Hall in Detroit. A native of Bloomington, Ind. Stryker was a columnist for Jazz Times from 2021-2023, and in his youth worked as a professional jazz saxophonist.
Conference Dinner Talk Title: Jazz from Detroit
You can’t tell the history of jazz without telling the history of jazz from Detroit. Scores of world-class jazz musicians have rolled off Detroit’s assembly line for nearly a century. Mark Stryker – author of the award-winning book Jazz from Detroit (Univ. of Michigan Press) and writer-producer of the new documentary film The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit (now streaming on Prime Video and other platforms), explores the musicians and the economic, social, cultural conditions that led to an explosion of jazz in the city in the mid-20th Century and have sustained the legacy until today. As part of his talk, he’ll show a short excerpt from his documentary.