Curation & Recommendations ...of and for musicians, writers, academics, painters, choreographers, filmmakers, theater directors, sound and set designers, chefs...
CURATION
from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
Name:
Luke Stewart
City/Place:
Washington, D.C.
Country:
United States
Hometown:
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Life & Work
Bio:
Luke Stewart embodies a multifaceted artistic persona, weaving music, performance, composition, organization, and research into a rich tapestry that pays homage to the storied legacy of Creative Music. Rooted in the expansive terrain of Black Music across the Americas and Africa, Stewart's oeuvre traverses various ensembles, including Irreversible Entanglements, SILT Trio, Exposure Quintet, and the boundary-pushing duo Blacks’ Myths, alongside numerous collaborative endeavors.
In his acclaimed albums "Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier" series, Stewart delves into the nuanced interplay between acoustic and electronic realms, exploring the intricate dynamics between wood and electricity. Leveraging the resonant qualities of the upright bass and amplifiers, he conjures ethereal harmonies and melodies through live experimentation, plucking strings, bowing, and manipulating the instrument in spatial dimensions.
Stewart's artistic journey has graced renowned stages worldwide, from the Vision Festival in New York to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, with notable appearances at prestigious institutions like The Kennedy Center and Harvard University. A respected scholar, he has shared his insights and talents at esteemed universities across the United States, complementing his academic pursuits with residencies at esteemed institutions like Roulette Intermedium and Pioneer Works.
Recognized for his profound impact on the jazz landscape, Stewart's contributions have been lauded by DownBeat magazine, cementing his status as one of the influential figures shaping the genre for generations to come. With academic credentials from American University and The New School, he continues to inspire as an adjunct professor at The New School, while also co-founding and directing CapitalBop, a pivotal jazz nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Luke Stewart is the Avant Music Editor of CapitalBop.com. He writes regularly for the site, for others, and in his spare time.
Luke Stewart is a DC/NYC-based musician and organizer of important musical presentations. He also has a presence in the national and international professional music community. He was profiled in the Washington Post in early 2017 as “holding down the jazz scene,” selected as “Best Musical Omnivore” in the Washington City Paper’s 2017 “Best of DC,” chosen as “Jazz Artist of the Year” for 2017 in the District Now, and in the 2014 People Issue of the Washington City Paper as a “Jazz Revolutionary,” citing his multi-faceted cultural activities throughout DC. In DC his regular ensembles include experimental jazz trio Heart of the Ghost, Low Ways Quartet featuring guitarist Anthony Pirog, and experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths. As a solo artist, he has been compiling a series of improvisational sound structures for Upright Bass and Amplifier. As a scholar/performer, he has performed and lectured at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Medgar Evers College, George Mason University, Wayne State University, University of Montana, New Mexico State University, and the University of South Carolina. He holds a BA in International Studies and a BA in Audio Production from American University, and an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship from the New School. Reach Luke at [email protected].
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Bewitching, bewitched Bahia, Brazil, sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes, stoked, steamed and sensual in the broadest sense of the word, limned in prosody and cadenced melody, is where the magic (mathematical and otherwise) and enchantment upon which this matrix is based, begins...
...a matrix conceived in conversation with now 75-year-old Raymundo Sodré — man of, and for, the trod-upon folk of the Brazilian backlands; his career destroyed during Brazil's dictatorship — during a discourse ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago...to the sidewalks of Harlem to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium...to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe... wherein Sodré opined for the ages what is now inscribed on the wall of Plato's cave: "Where there's misery, there's music!"...
...a matrix wherein it's not which pill you take, it's what pathways you take, pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Terra Brasilis: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian... Matrix Ground Zero being the Recôncavo, contouring the Bay of All Saints, Earth's absolute center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's inffable Black Rome: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
I built the Matrix in the place below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter; designed by Walter Mariano of the Federal University of the Recôncavo of Bahia).
The Matrix is a small world network in which creators may recommend other creators and be recommended by other creators. And where, like stars coalescing into a galaxy, creators in the Matrix mathematically gravitate to proximity to all other creators in the Matrix, no matter how far apart in location, fame or society. This gravity is called "the small world phenomenon".
While the Matrix's utilization of small world gravity is unprecedented (position everybody in the creative universe within discoverable range of everybody else in the creative universe), small world networks are all around us, even inside us: our brains contain small world networks. Humanity itself is a small world network, wherein over 8 billion human beings average 6 or fewer steps between any two given people, anywhere. Those steps are seldom all transitable though. In the Matrix they are. In a small world great things are possible.
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).