Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship Award

Jesse Stewart, Music

The Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship Award will allow Jesse Stewart of Music to complete a series of 118 compositions and to finish work on a single-authored book project. Stewart will also complete a recording of an ambitious piece he is writing for a string quartet and drum set.

Since coming to Carleton in 2008, Stewart’s music has been performed at over fifty major festivals throughout Canada and in the United States, France, and Germany.  He is also a member of Stretch Orchestra, a trio that won the 2012 “Instrumental Album of the Year” Juno award for their debut, self-titled recording. Stewart’s work has been a consistent area of focus of local, national and international media. In 2010, he was one of two non-Tibetan Canadians invited to perform for H.H the Dali Lama in front of an audience of 7000 as part of the Long Life Initiation Ceremony and official opening of the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto.  Stewart has collaborated with a number of celebrated creative practitioners, including a 2011 collaboration with Pauline Oliveros, who is widely considered to be one the most important living figures in the field of experimental or “new” music. This partnership will continue into 2013. In March of 2013, he performed and recorded with legendary percussionist Hamid Drake.

Stewart has received various high profile commissions, including a 2010 project from the City of Toronto and Ottawa’s National Capital Commission to write an extended piece of music for instruments that he designed and built out of ice.  Among many other notable commissions, Stewart wrote for Ensemble Supermusique, one  of the most prominent musique actuel ensembles in Montreal’s vibrant experimental music scene.

Beyond his work as a composer, performer and instrument builder, Stewart is also an active visual artist and sound artist. His work in these fields has been shown in numerous solo, duo, and group exhibitions at many prominent institutions. These include The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, and the Karsh Mason Gallery in Ottawa.

Stewart has also published numerous essays in peer-reviewed academic journals including American Music, Contemporary Music Review and Black Music Research Journal. He has also published one book chapter in an edited anthology with three more chapters accepted for publication and/or press at the time of this writing. Finally, Stewart is also co-authoring a book on the pedagogy of musical improvisation that has been accepted for publication by Duke University Press.