24 AMERICAN CAPRICES | ALL EARS - REVIEW

July 2026: Good Stuff

July 2026 | by Emery Kerekes

Violinist Curtis Stewart’s set of twenty-four Wieniawski-Paganinian caprices, each legibly rooted in its own corner of American popular or vernacular music — Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, Nina Simone, Earth Wind and Fire — and delivered with his typically nonchalant command, even when he’s not the one playing. Stewart spins fantasies that never exit the musical paradigm of their source material, instead exploring each harmonic and melodic corner to its fantastical extreme.