Curtis Stewart Unveils 2023-2024 Season Highlights

Three-time GRAMMY Award-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart translates stories of self determination to the concert stage. Tearing down the facade of "classical violinist," Stewart is in constant pursuit of his musical authenticity, treating art as a battery for realizing citizenship. As a solo violinist, composer, Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, professor at The Juilliard School, and member of award-winning ensembles PUBLIQuartet and The Mighty Third Rail, he realizes a vision to find personal and powerful connections between styles, cultures and musics. JazzTimes raves, "he shows his audience the colors inside of himself-color(s) not yet invented. Far from self-indulgent, it is self-revelatory. It is vulnerable. It is creation."

Stewart embarks on an exciting 2023-2024 season, highlighted by a solo performance and world premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a premiere by The Knights at Carnegie Hall, and additional engagements as a composer, performer, and curator throughout the United States. Among his season highlights, Stewart will be featured as a soloist with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Oregon Symphony as they perform selections from his newest album of Love., released earlier this year on New Amsterdam Records. The album is a poignant tribute to his late mother, Elektra Kurtis, whom he cared for in their family apartment before her death from brain cancer in 2021. He discusses the work in depth in an audio essay, A Life Cycle of Grief, recently featured in WQXR's Artist Propulsion Lab Podcast Articles.

On March 3, 2023, Stewart performs with the CSO's Music Now ensemble in a program including the world premiere of his new violin concerto Resonance, as well as selections from the album. Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's "Music Now," Resonance is the first of three movements in Curtis Stewart's Violin Concerto No 1. With stylistic nods to such influences as Ligeti, Stravinsky and Wieniawski, the short, scherzo-like work cunningly combines elements of contemporary jazz voicing with the frenetic and minimalist grooves of contemporary "Trap" music and an introspective counterpoint reminiscent of Shostakovich. This performance, conducted by Chicago Opera Theater director Lidiya Yankovskaya, has been dedicated to composer-performers - with Stewart cited as a standout talent along with conductor and educator Tania León, composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey and CSO Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery.

In a solo performance with the Oregon Symphony on March 22, 2024, Stewart is featured in a second concert highlighting selections from of Love. Held at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts and conducted by Deanna Tham, the program also includes Grieg's Holberg Suite, Gesualdo's Resta di darmi noia, Inti Figgis-Vizueta's Coradh, and Missy Mazzoli's violin concerto Dark with Excessive Bright, also featuring Stewart.

Curtis Stewart recently appeared as a mentor composer for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot Reading with the Cincinnati Symphony from October 3-4, 2023. Held in partnership with the American Composers Forum, New Music USA, and the League of American Orchestras, EarShot provides a platform for emerging composers to work directly with accomplished mentor composers, conductors and ensembles, culminating in a concert of their original compositions.

On October 16, 2023, Stewart's piece Toward America - a recomposition of Dvořák's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, "American" - will be performed as part of the Orlando Philharmonic's program Seeking Answers. The program also features Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question and two pieces featuring brass quartet The Westerlies: Conrad Tao's Concerto for Westerlies - a world premiere composition co-commissioned by The Westerlies and the Orlando Philharmonic - and the old English folk ballad Saro, arranged by Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly.

Stewart goes on to perform with cellist Tomeka Reid at Edgefest, held at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, MI on October 21, 2023. Also featured in the program are violinist Sam Bardfeld and violist Stephanie Griffin.

On October 26, 2023, Stewart's Toward America will be performed in its New York premiere by The Knights, an innovative contemporary orchestra, at Carnegie Hall. Led by conductor Eric Jacobsen and featuring Chris Thile on mandolin and vocals, this program blends classical repertoire by Dvořák and Bach with new works including original compositions by Thile and The Knights Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen.

On December 16, 2023, Early Music Seattle and Meany Center for the Performing Arts present Stewart in Many Messiahs, a holiday program developed by Aaron Grad and a composing collective comprising a wide variety of musical and cultural backgrounds. Using Handel's Messiah as a starting point, participating composers have brought their own voices and influences to the project, yielding a genre-bending song cycle incorporating meditations on race, justice and healing. Rather than the one Messiah invoked by Handel, Many Messiahs is composed around the view that it takes all of humanity to create change.

Stewart next performs on two dates with the Virginia Symphony: on January 19, 2024 in Newport News, VA at the Ferguson Center for the Arts, and on January 20, 2024 in Virginia Beach, VA at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts. Both performances, led by Eric Jacobsen, will feature a program of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 and 3 Selections from Negro Melodies for Violin and String Orchestra - a new recomposition of selections from Samuel Coleridge Taylor's 24 Negro Melodies by Stewart, Andrew Roitstein, and Hamilton Berry.

On February 19, 2024, Stewart makes his debut with Pennsylvania's Johnstown Symphony at the Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center. The program features Julia Perry's long-neglected Violin Concerto - presented in anticipation of the world premiere recording of this piece by Experiential Orchestra with Stewart as soloist. An additional choral work by Perry - Ye Who Seek the Truth - and Brahms' Symphony No. 4 in E Minor complete the program.

On April 18 and April 20, 2024, Stewart serves as curator of the REVERB Festival, presented by the Phoenix Symphony at the Herberger Theater. For this contemporary music festival celebrating the current classical landscape, Stewart and the Phoenix Symphony will premiere Seasons of Change, a recomposition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, an afrofuturist meditation / AI dreamscape on climate change, class and the nature of digital memory.

Curtis Stewart 2023-24 Season Calendar

October 3, 2023
American Composers Orchestra EarShot Readings at Cincinnati Symphony (Mentor Composer)
Cincinnati Symphony | Cincinnati, OH
Link: www.americancomposers.org/performances-events/earshot-readings-at-the-cincinnati-symphony-orchestra

October 16, 2023
Orlando Philharmonic Presents Toward America featuring The Westerlies
First United Methodist Church of Orlando | Orlando, FL
Link: https://orlandophil.org/event/seeking-answers/

October 21, 2023
Edgefest with Tomeka Reid Quartet
Kerrytown Concert House | Ann Arbor, MI
Link: www.kerrytownconcerthouse.com

October 26, 2023
Carnegie Hall Presents The Knights in World Premiere Arrangement
Carnegie Hall | New York, NY
Link: www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/10/26/The-Knights-0730PM

December 16, 2023
Early Music Seattle Presents Many Messiahs
Meany Hall | Seattle, WA
Link: https://earlymusicseattle.org/event/many-messiahs/

January 19-20, 2024
Soloist with Virginia Symphony
Ferguson Center for the Arts | Newport News, VA
Link: https://virginiasymphony.org/tchaikovsky-6-the-story-behind-the-music-1-19-1-20/

February 10, 2024
Julia Perry's Violin Concerto with Johnstown Symphony
Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center | Johnstown, PA
Link: www.johnstownsymphony.org/2023-24-season/event-five-f5fxh-2das7

March 3, 2024
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Presents of Love. in "Jessie Montgomery & Curtis Stewart"
CSO Symphony Center | Chicago, IL
Link: https://cso.org/performances/23-24/cso-musicnow/montgomery-stewart/

March 22, 2024
Oregon Symphony Presents of Love. - A Personal Requiem
Patricia Reser Center for the Arts | Beaverton, OR
Link: www.orsymphony.org/concerts-tickets/2324/of-love-a-personal-requiem/

April 17, 2024
Phoenix Symphony Presents REVERB Contemporary Music Festival
Herberger Theater | Phoenix, AZ
Link: www.phoenixsymphony.org/show/reverb-contemporary-music-festival-2324/

More About Curtis Stewart

As a soloist, Curtis Stewart has been presented by Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Cal Performances, Washington Performing Arts, Virginia Arts Festival, The Juilliard School, and the 2022 GRAMMY Awards, among many others. He has made special appearances with Los Angeles Opera and singer-songwriter Tamar Kali; as curator and guest soloist with Anthony Roth Costanzo and the New York Philharmonic "Bandwagon," touring performance installations from NYC's Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and Museum of Modern Art; to MTV specials with Wyclef Jean; and sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden with Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and Seal. Stewart's 2021 album of quarantined song cycles and art videos, Of Power (Bright Shiny Things), was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

Stewart has been commissioned to compose new solo, chamber, and orchestral works by the Seattle Symphony, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall's Play/USA, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and members of the New York Philharmonic, The Knights, La Jolla Music Society, Sybarite5, the New York Festival of Song, Newport Classical Festival, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Eastman Cello Institute, and more. In 2022, he was named Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, a national organization dedicated to the creation, celebration, performance, and promotion of orchestral music by diverse and innovative American composers.

Curtis Stewart is a member of award-winning ensembles, PUBLIQuartet (Chamber Music America Visionary award, winner Concert Artist Guild, 2023 Grammy Award Nomination) and The Mighty Third Rail (Best Music, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Comic Book Theater Festival). PUBLIQuartet's album What Is American (Bright Shiny Things) was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award. He has held chamber music residencies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, and made return appearances at the Newport, Detroit, Vision, NYC Winter Jazz Festivals. Curtis Stewart has worked with many of today's forward-thinking musicians, including Henry Threadgill, SilkRoad Ensemble, Jessie Montgomery, Alicia Hall-Moran and Jason Moran, Mark O'Connor, Julia Bullock, members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Billy Childs, Alarm Will Sound, Linda Oh, JACK Quartet, members of Snarky Puppy, Don Byron, Matt Wilson, among many others.

An avid teacher, Curtis Stewart teaches Chamber Music, Improvised Chamber Music, and "Cultural Equity and Performance Practice" at The Juilliard School; directs the Contemporary Chamber Music program at the Perlman Music Program; served on the board of Concert Artist Guild; conducted several orchestras and opera pit orchestras; and for 10 years led all levels of music theory and string orchestra at the Laguardia High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City.

Stewart was born into a musical family - his father is avant jazz tuba pioneer Bob Stewart and mother Elektra Kurtis, a soulful Greek jazz violinist - who formed the framework of his sound world through daring improvisation, rigorous western classical training, and conceptual composition. Learn more at www.curtisjstewart.com.

Photo Credit: Titilayo Ayangade