Luke Stewart (musician)

Stewart grew up in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he studied saxophone, violin, and guitar before he began playing electric bass in high school.^[1][21] Stewart began his undergraduate degree as an international studies major at the University of Mississippi.^[1] In 2005, as he prepared to begin an internship at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Washington, D.C., Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast.^[1] Stewart decided to stay in D.C. and transferred to American University, where his studies expanded to include audio engineering.^[10] In addition to his bachelor's from American, Stewart completed a master's in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at The New School in 2019.^[22]

After moving to D.C., Stewart began frequently attending and performing at avant-garde jazz and rock gigs. He also interned at "Jazz and Justice" radio station WPFW, eventually hosting his own weekly jazz radio show and working as a production coordinator.^[10]

In 2010, Stewart met Giovanni Russonello, who had recently founded jazz advocacy organization and website CapitalBop.^[23] Stewart began writing for and then co-running the organization,^[10] which was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in 2019.^[24]

Stewart met Camae Ayewa (also known as Moor Mother) while playing with Laughing Man, an art-punk band that shared bills with Ayewa's group the Mighty Paradocs.^[2] One year after the 2014 "People Issue" of the Washington City Paper called Stewart a "jazz revolutionary",^[25] he joined Ayewa, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, and Tcheser Holmes in forming the "liberation-oriented free-jazz collective" Irreversible Entanglements.^[26] The group performed in the inaugural season of the Kennedy Center's "Direct Current" contemporary culture showcase,^[27] and their releases have been included in best-of lists in Magnet,^[28] NPR Music,^[29] The Quietus,^[30] and Stereogum's "20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s".^[31]

Stewart has said he wants his collaborative work to "highlight the non-hierarchical nature of free improvisational music" and to challenge "the concept of the capital-C composer and how it affects our perceptions of music".^[21]

In 2021, he was a Resident Composer at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.^[32]