New Video and Single 'Drift To Wake' Out Now From Curtis Stewart's OF LOVE
Three-time GRAMMY nominated violinist and composer tears down the facade of "classical violinist," in constant pursuit of his musical authenticity.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz May. 10, 2023
On Friday, June 2, 2023, violinist and composer Curtis Stewart releases a new self-composed and performed album of Love. on New Amsterdam Records. The album is dedicated to Stewart's late mother, Elektra Kurtis-Stewart, and was composed and recorded in the childhood apartment he inherited after his mother's passing. Curtis' original compositions for strings, electronics and voice weave between a single poem of prayer and songs Curtis' visionary mother taught him - meditative recompositions of Alice Coltrane, Johannes Brahms, Duke Ellington, Greek folk song, jazz standards, Karol Szymanowski, and Purcell. Its 20 tracks chart a course of grieving and coming to grips with loss. "Loss should be a vital part of our cultural lexicon," Stewart said. "You cannot gain without the threat of loss. You cannot love without it either."
The album's second single, Drift to Wake, is out today - just ahead of Mother's Day. Set in that same Manhattan apartment, the track channels Stewart's thoughts as he contemplates the space where he'd only recently held his mother's hand - struggling to make that space his own as he imagines her entering a new plane of existence.
Three-time GRAMMY nominated violinist and composer tears down the facade of "classical violinist," in constant pursuit of his musical authenticity. 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, Stewart 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."
The album's first single, Embrace, was released on April 5 and is now available for download and streaming. Commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra for violin and orchestra, the track incorporates spoken clips from an interview with Elektra Kurtis-Stewart, a violinist and composer herself. Stewart explains that artistic choice in terms of using sounds from outside the concert stage to elevate concert music. "Sampling music and words from communities where the work is performed, Embrace spins the idea of 'outreach' on its head," he said.
As a full album, of Love. explores Stewart's poignant journey as loving son, advocate, and caretaker after his mother's brain cancer diagnosis. As her illness advanced, he turned to music for a path through his grief - and through the strange and unsettling maze of emotions evoked by her all-too-familiar apartment, which he inherited after her death at age 66 in 2021.
"It was a curse for a few months," he remembered. "I grew up there, my parents got divorced there, and I was a caretaker for four years there. But the music helped me become comfortable in that space. The music transported me. It helped me translate an inner reality."
By exposing and navigating his own vulnerability, of Love. represents an offering of comfort for those who are grieving, and a call to reject the shame around the perceived weakness that can accompany grief: "to realize that in our 'weakness,' we are made strong," Stewart said. "of Love. is a form of musical caretaking. These works flow directly out of a visceral sensation of holding and loss - a sonic grappling with grief. Our world is in a permanent state of loss and hope and hardship and joy and struggle. That is a reality worth making music about."
Highlights of Stewart's upcoming activities include attending the Biennale Amsterdam for Kronos 50 For The Future with PUBLIQuartet in early May; the live world premiere of Embrace during a June 1 performance alongside Aaron Diehl and the Harlem Quartet at the American Composers Orchestra's SONiC Festival; the world premiere of Newport Music Festival commission The Gilded Cage on July 22; a residency at the Tanglewood Institute Boston; and projects as a new WQXR Propulsion Lab Fellow.
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.
of Love. Tracklist
Curtis Stewart - of Love.
i. Remember [1:18]
ii. Gone - The Happy Blues [0:44]
iii. Present Tense [2:49]
iv. Thalasakki Mou [5:11]
v. low [3:01]
vi. krishna (improvisations on Alice Coltrane's krishna krishna) [4:02]
vii. Adagio from Johannes Brahms Violin Sonata No 1 Op 78 (We are going to be OK) [5:16]
viii. Body and Soul [3:38]
ix. Gone... [0:43]
x. She Goes Away [1:07]
xi. Here [3:50]
xii. Embrace [11:10]
xiii. Gone. [1:04]
xiv. dream it. [5:34]
xv. She Goes Away. [1:26]
xvi. Pisces [2:09]
xvii. City's Son (improvisations on Duke Ellington's Take the A-Train) [3:50]
xviii. GONE [1:42]
xvix. Drift to Wake [7:36]
xx. Remember them [8:48]
Total Time: 1:14:58
Violin, Composition, Arrangements, Lyrics, Vocals, Recorded, Edited, Mixed, Mastered by Curtis Stewart
Additional Mastering: Derek Linzy (Engineer for Prince at Paisley Park Studios, 2013)
Additional Production: Dave Veslocki
Photo: Marilena Arvelo
Album Art: Meg Pickarski
"Dedicated to my mother, Elektra Kurtis Stewart - 1955-2021"
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