24 AMERICAN CAPRICES | THE ARTS FUSE - REVIEW

Classical Music Album: The American Songbook, Recast for Solo Violin

September 2026

By Jonathan Blumhofer

According to Pablo Picasso, there is no abstract art. “You must always start with something,” the Spanish master offered. “Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

Curtis Stewart basically put that thesis to work in his 24 American Caprices, which is out now from the Bright Shiny Things label. Using two dozen American songs drawn from various pop genres, jazz, religious music, and patriotic music as his launching pad, his set proves as fascinating for the originality of its concept as it is impressive in execution.

In fact, Stewart’s ability to home in on little motivic and gestural ideas and develop them to the full is one of the Caprices’ great takeaways.

Stewart is the primary soloist on the recording and, as a violinist, he’s an exceptional advocate for what he’s preaching as a composer. His playing is versatile and electrifying.

Taken together, the 24 American Caprices certainly stand in good stead alongside other pillars of the repertoire, namely Paganini’s epic set (…). If that one is, by a hair, a bit more of a compendium of bravura violin techniques, the present work hardly stints on pyrotechnics—and, besides, it seems to be aiming for more substantive expressive goals.