Stew Stewart

Harman Writer-in-Residence Spring 2021

Stew Stewart is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and playwright from Los Angeles, California. Over the years, Stew has dipped his toes into multiple genres including R&B, punk, noise-rock, and jazz. In the early ’90s, he formed the band The Negro Problem—the problem being a rift between the music he wanted to make and the music that was expected from him. Albums with The Negro Problem include Post Minstrel Syndrome (1997), Joys and Concerns (1999), Making It (2002), and more recently Notes of a Native Song (2018), a meditation on James Baldwin. Stew has also had a successful solo career with albums like Guest Host (2000) and The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs (2002), which both won Entertainment Weekly’s Album of the Year.

His musical Passing Strange was nominated for several Tonys in 2008 and won for Best Book. Passing Strange also received two Obie awards for Best New Theater Piece and Best Ensemble, and was made into a 2010 movie by Spike Lee. Stew has also been featured in Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It. When he’s not experimenting and producing challenging and groundbreaking music and projects, Stew encourages creative thought and artistic transformation in classrooms at Harvard University, the New School, Sarah Lawrence College, Pratt, and many other institutions. In 2018, with students at LaGuardia Community College, he developed a new musical, Columbus is Happening, which he described as an “ode to Queens.”

And Then There Was Us

Presented by the Harman Program, Baruch’s first student-written show And Then There Was Us proved to be a huge success among faculty, students and friends of the university. Within a day of the tickets going public, the five-show run had sold out, which prompted the transformation of the dress rehearsal into a sixth performance to give more people a chance to partake. It was a welcome change for all involved after being kept off the stage for over a year and a half due to the pandemic.

The cast and crew had the pleasure of working with director and Baruch professor Christopher Scott as well as musical director Greg Kenna. Always moving and motivating everyone, Scott knew how to bring the production together and breathe life into each story by getting to know the actors and actresses he worked with. He fostered the connections between actor and character, and urged all of the performers not to act but to feel. Kenna pushed the group to achieve musical precision and own each moment of every song, and drummer Marlon Cherry was the cherry on top, providing a groove that got every performer moving. Baruch professor and vocalist Dominique Plaisant worked wonders as the show came together, helping amp up the voices of all of the singers and add conviction to their words.

Vignettes were written by former Harman students Kenneth Fremer, Sable Gravesandy, Inga Keselman and Brittany Williams, with a final song written and composed by Ursula Hansberry. While none of the writers came to this task with a cohesive show in mind, the struggle of youth and coming-of-age was exemplified by each through the lenses of wildly unique characters in and around New York City, all affected by the gravity of this place we as students call home.

Spring 2021 Harman writer Stew edited and composed music for the songs in the four vignettes. With repeating melodic motifs and driving, semi-unorthodox rhythms, his compositions further brought together the plot lines.

A video recording of the event is available here.