Earl Louis Stewart’s ‘Homage to Swing’ Recognized by American Prize Competition

“‘Homage to Swing’ is just that, it’s a tribute to the tradition of swing,” said Professor Emeritus Earl Louis Stewart at the symphony’s premier in 2017. “It’s also an exercise in contemplative jazz. In four movements, it illustrates the marriage between contemporary contemplative jazz and traditional Western classical forms.” 

Now, his “Symphony #5: Homage to Swing  (Identity 158)” has been awarded a judge’s citation for Special Orchestral Accomplishment in Jazz in the category Composition – Music for Orchestra (professional division) in the 2023 American Prize Competition. In 2018, Stewart, of UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies and Black studies program, earned first place in the Global Music Awards competition. 

“Symphonies, chamber works, and solo works all reflect, in a very real sense, the musical background of this composer, which is the sum of the American urban folk tradition, i.e. spirituals, blues, soul music, gospel music, jazz, and folk-based African music retentions,” Stewart wrote in the composer’s notes.

Earl Stewart is the author of African American Music: An Introduction, a musicological survey of African American music from the Civil War to the present. He has published articles on the aesthetic and theoretical significance of African American music – several of which were co-authored with Dr. Jane Duran. A sampling includes "Towards an Aesthetic of Black Musical Expression," Journal of Aesthetic Education; "Scott Joplin and the Quest for Identity,"Journal of Aesthetic Education; "Coleridge-Taylor: Concatenationalism and Essentialism in an Anglo-African Composer," American Philosophical Association Newsletter of Philosophy and the Black Experience.

Source and Full Article:
The Current