Luke Stewart

Luke Stewart is a composer-improviser, bassist, multi-instrumentalist, and organizer leader of his Exposure Quintet, with Edward Wilkerson, Jr., Ken Vandermark, Jim Baker, and Avreeayl Ra;

Stewart has co-run DC jazz advocacy nonprofit CapitalBop since 2010, curating the organization's longstanding "Loft Jazz" concert series and writing music criticism for its website.

In 2020, he was included among DownBeat's "25 for the Future" as an artist who "shapes the artistic landscape".

He has performed or recorded with artists including Camae Ayewa, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, Tcheser Holmes, Archie Shepp, Warren "Trae" Crudup, III, Daniel Carter, Fay Victor, Hamiet Bluiett, Wadada Leo Smith, Jarrett Gilgore, Leila Bordreuil, and Priests.

Early life and career

Stewart grew up in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he studied saxophone, violin, and guitar before he began playing electric bass in high school. Stewart began his undergraduate degree as an international studies major at the University of Mississippi.

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. Stewart began writing for and then co-running the organization,

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. he joined Ayewa, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, and Tcheser Holmes in forming the "liberation-oriented free-jazz collective" Irreversible Entanglements. The group performed in the inaugural season of the Kennedy Center's "Direct Current" contemporary culture showcase, and their releases have been included in best-of lists in Magnet, NPR Music, The Quietus, and Stereogum's "20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s".

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".

Discography

As leader / co-leader

As sideperson