Violinist and Composer Curtis Stewart Releases New Album 'Seasons of Change'

Six-time GRAMMY® Award-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart has released Seasons of Change, a recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Bright Shiny Things. 

Seasons of Change serves as the frame for an Afrofuturist meditation on climate change, class, and the nature of digital memory. The album blends classical forms with fragmented digital soundscapes that incorporate the recorded voices of unhoused populations Stewart encountered in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as newly written texts. Stewart prolifically performs his own compositions to create a multi-track, layered ensemble and is joined on the album for cadenzas in the first, second, and fourth movements by three spectacular violinists – Lara St. John, Njioma Grievous, and Charles Yang. Listen to it below.

The emotional core of Seasons of Change is a series of conversations and recorded interviews with people experiencing homelessness in Phoenix, Arizona. The conversations were facilitated by a partnership between the Phoenix Symphony and Circle the City, an organization dedicated to providing healthcare to unhoused individuals in Phoenix’s Maricopa County. Giving a much-needed voice to people for whom climate change is an acutely experienced daily reality, these recordings are punctuated by Stewart’s original texts, which themselves echo and deconstruct elements of the four poems Vivaldi wrote as the basis for his concertos. These elements come together on Seasons of Change to explore the question: Who will climate change erase first?

Stewart embarked on a mini-tour of Seasons of Change in April 2025 under the auspices of the Gateways Music Festival, with stops including the Eastman School of Music, New York’s Kaufman Music Center, Princeton University, and Rutgers University. Seasons of Change premiered at the Phoenix Symphony in 2024. He will be performing a chamber music version with Sybarite5 in Fall 2025.

Seasons of Change includes public conversation and recorded interviews with the unhoused population around the heavy impact of climate change on their daily lives. This album features the voices of individuals experiencing homelessness, captured through a partnership between the Phoenix Symphony and Circle the City. During this collaboration, participants shared their reflections with Curtis. Circle the City, dedicated to providing healthcare to unhoused individuals in Maricopa County, has welcomed Phoenix Symphony musicians for regular visits to their sites and patients. These recordings were created in partnership with the Phoenix Symphony.

About Curtis Stewart

Stewart has multiple albums out in the summer of 2025. In addition to Seasons of Change, Stewart will be featured as soloist on an album of world premiere orchestral recordings by Samuel Coleridge Taylor on AVIE Records, performed by the National Philharmonic under Michael Repper. 

In his 2024-2025 season, Stewart’s performances included appearances at the Music in the Morning series in Vancouver; at his program, The American Recital, at Princeton University alongside masterclasses with students; in Bernstein's Serenade with the Maryland Symphony Orchestra; and with Mak Grgic at the St. Louis Classical Guitar concert season. He also held residencies at Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Cleveland Institute of Music, and served as Resident Artist at Kaufman Music Center, during which he performed in the world premieres of his own American Caprices and Seasons of Change with the Gateways Festival Orchestra at Eastman School of Music and The Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall. 

Among many others, Stewart’s compositions have recently been featured by the Sphinx Virtuosi, which performed his Drill on a nationwide tour with Stewart as the group’s Composer-in-Residence; the American Composers Orchestra, which commissioned his Embrace as part of New Virtuoso: Borders and premiered it at Carnegie Hall; and by violin and cello duo Catherine Cho and Amy Sue Barston in a new work commissioned by Juilliard Prep. Stewart has also been commissioned to compose new solo, chamber, and orchestral works by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall’s Play/USA, Seattle Symphony, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, the New York Festival of Song, Newport Classical Festival, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Eastman Cello Institute, Orlando Philharmonic, The Knights, La Jolla Music Society, Sybarite5, members of the New York Philharmonic, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and more. He composed The Famous People, five recompositions of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, for a premiere by violinist Gil Shaham with the Virginia Symphony in March 2023, followed by a performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2024.

As a soloist, Curtis Stewart has been presented by Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 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. 

The world premiere recording of Julia Perry’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the Experiential Orchestra on Bright Shiny Things was nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Both Stewart’s 2021 album of quarantined song cycles and art videos, Of Power (Bright Shiny Things), and his 2023 album, of Love.—a tribute to his late mother Elektra Kurtis-Stewart—were nominated for GRAMMY® Awards for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. 

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 enthusiastic educator, Curtis Stewart teaches “Performance Practice of the Blues” and “Improvised Chamber Music” as well as regularly coaching Chamber Music 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 ten 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. 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.

Album Credit: Meg Pickarski