Robert Stewart (saxophonist)
| Robert Stewart | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Robert Darrin Stewart |
| Born |
August 17, 1969 Oakland, California, United States |
| Genres | Jazz, soul, blues, Middle Eastern, R&B, avant-garde |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Years active | 1986-present |
| Labels | Qwest, Warner Bros., Red, Nagel-Heyer, Exodus, World Stage, Armageddon |
| Associated acts | Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Smith, Billy Higgins, Donald Byrd, Pharoah Sanders, Winard Harper, Black Note |
| Website | therobertstewartexperience |
Robert Stewart is an American saxophonist, drummer, pianist, vocalist, flutist, composer, producer, and theologian. He is best known for his recordings (The Force and In the Gutta) for music industry mogulQuincy Jones, as the lead tenor saxophonist on trumpeter and internationally acclaimed cultural icon Wynton Marsalis' Blood on the Fields (the only composition in jazz history to win the Pulitzer Prize), and as the protegé of the avant-garde saxophone titanPharoah Sanders. Jazz critic Jason Ankeny declared Stewart to be one of the best saxophonists to emerge at the end of the 20th century. Jazz writer Nicky Baxter calls him "the second coming of Ben Webster." Jazz drum legendBilly Higgins refers to Stewart as "perhaps the most important young artist to come along in decades." Writer Scott Yanow hails Stewart as the most lyrical and melodic improviser of his generation.
Robert Darrin Stewart was born on August 17, 1969 in Oakland, California. His biological father (Robert Stewart III) is a San Francisco Conservatory trained flutist and trumpeter who performed with the famous R&B group The Whispers during the late 1960s, and musical director for the 1950s pop vocalist Bobby Freeman during the 1970s. Stewart's mother (Jackie Mae Syas) was a computer analysts born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His step-father (Clifton Cecil Patrick) was a truck driver and agriculturalist born in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Stewart's mother began teaching him to read from the Holy Qur'an of Islam from the time that he was 3 years old; The Bible (Judaism and Christianity) was his next reading task. Stewart later began to study the other 4 major religions of the world: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Theology was his early foundation.
In the early 1980s, Oakland underwent a metamorphosis; from being the city that produced the greatest and most influential music titans Sly and The Family Stone and The Tower of Power, and such radical social revolutionaries as Huey P. Newton (founder) and The Black Panther Party, to a city that is one of North America's most notorious gang war zones; riddled with crack cocaine, military assault weapons, and drive-by murders. In the 21st century, Oakland remains one of the top 5 most dangerous cites in the United States. Nonetheless, Stewart was able to rise from the flames of this netherworld to become a Phoenix of the jazz idiom.
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