Overjoyed to share my new music with you!
RHYTHM OF THE SPIRIT VOL.1
RHYTHM OF THE SPIRIT VOL. 1 from Earl Louis Stewart makes a bold statement: that America’s music — born of sorrow, improvisation, resistance, and joy — belongs within the same canon as Bach or Palestrina. Stewart’s fugues, canons, counterfugues, and retrogrades are written with the strictness of Europe’s 16th and 18th century conventions, yet pulse with the syncopation and soul of ragtime, blues, and jazz. The album features three sonatas — No. 2, with its dusky blues fugue and vibraphone ballad; No. 5, which develops ragtime counterfugues, retrogrades, and canons; and No. 12, where a true blues fugue reconciles the 12-bar form with the classical sonata.
“To me, great works of art are a snapshot of God’s beauty and God’s love, and are consequently transcendent in both their emotional and intellectual beauty.”
- Earl Louis Stewart
From the Press
"I recommend this CD to both jazz enthusiasts and classical music lovers."
- Filippo Focosi, Kathodik
MY MUSICAL INFLUENCES
When asked which musical mentors have had the greatest influence on him, Earl Stewart points to a constellation of masters across jazz, classical, and Black compositional traditions.
“My greatest jazz mentor was Alvin Batiste. The classical master who has influenced me most profoundly is Johannes Brahms. And among Black composers, my deepest influences are Scott Joplin and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.”
Global Music Awards: January 2022 Honorees
Earl Louis Stewart, Symphony #2 in E Minor (Identity 54), composition
NOTEWORTHY
African Origins and Adaptations in African American Music
Earl Stewart, Ph.D.
is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his BS in Secondary Education from Southern University, Baton Rouge, and his MM and DMA in Composition from The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Stewart is the author of African American Music: An Introduction, a musicological survey of African American music from the Civil War to the present. He has published articles on the aesthetic and theoretical significance of African American music, including “Towards an Aesthetic of Black Musical Expression,” Journal of Aesthetic Education; “Scott Joplin and the Quest for Identity,” Journal of Aesthetic Education; “Coleridge-Taylor: Concatenationism and Essentialism in an Anglo-African Composer,” American Philosophical Association Newsletter of Philosophy and the Black Experience.
Through the Years
Through every season of my life, music has been a steady companion, shaping, teaching, and grounding me. It has grown as I’ve grown, evolving alongside my experiences, my faith, and the people I love.