grant stewart
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Different from any other tenor player today… Up and coming genius. The essence of uncompromising… a gutty heavyweight sound that smacks of dedication and assurance.
Born in Toronto , Canada on June 4, 1971 , Grant Stewart was exposed as a young child to the music of Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray and Coleman Hawkins by his father, a high-school English teacher and semiprofessional guitarist. Father and son often played together for hours on end. It was through these early experiences and his father’s encouragement that Stewart first developed a strong ear for melody, style, and improvisation. He began with the alto saxophone at age 10, and at 14 his first teacher, noted Toronto bandleader Pete Schofield, invited him to play professionally in Scofield’s Big Band. At 17 he switched to the tenor saxophone and was soon playing with such master saxophonists as Pat Labarbara and Bob Mover. Stewart considers Mover to be one of his greatest teachers and among his strongest influences along with Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Don Byas, and Lester Young.
Since moving to New York City at the age of 19, Stewart has studied with such masters as Donald Byrd, Barry Harris, and Joe Lovano, and performed with Curtis Fuller, John Hendricks, Clark Terry, Etta Jones, Bill Charlap, Frank Gant, Bob Mover, Brad Mehldau, Russell Malone, Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, Jimmy Cobb, Mickey Roker, Arthur Harper, Jimmy Lovelace, Cecil Payne, and was a member of the last Al Grey Sextet. Stewart can be found playing at such clubs in NY as, Birdland, The Jazz Standard, Visiones, Smalls and can be heard every Tuesday night at Fat Cats Jazz Club. Stewart has performed all over North America and Europe as well as Japan , Brazil , Taiwan and was one of the first jazz artists to be invited to play at the historical Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg , Russia . Grant was also a featured artist at the Guggenheim Museum ’s Jazz series with his trio-featuring Jimmy Cobb.
Stewart has two releases as a leader out on Criss Cross, Downtown Sounds (1992) and More Urban Tones , as well as one on the Fresh Sound label entitled Buen Rollo . Geoff Chapman, of the Toronto Star selected Downtown Sounds as one of the Top Five Jazz Albums of 1994.
2005 will see the appearance of two new recordings on the Criss-Cross label: Wailin’, by a two-tenor quintet Grant co-leads with Eric Alexander, as well as Grant’s latest quintet release featuring Bill Charlap and Joe Cohn.
You can also hear Grant on Ryan Kisor’s recent release The Awakening, also on Criss Cross Jazz.