Six-time GRAMMY® Award-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart has released Seasons of Change, a recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Bright Shiny Things.
Seasons of Change serves as the frame for an Afrofuturist meditation on climate change, class, and the nature of digital memory. The album blends classical forms with fragmented digital soundscapes that incorporate the recorded voices of unhoused populations Stewart encountered in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as newly written texts. Stewart prolifically performs his own compositions to create a multi-track, layered ensemble and is joined on the album for cadenzas in the first, second, and fourth movements by three spectacular violinists – Lara St. John, Njioma Grievous, and Charles Yang. Listen to it below.
The emotional core of Seasons of Change is a series of conversations and recorded interviews with people experiencing homelessness in Phoenix, Arizona. The conversations were facilitated by a partnership between the Phoenix Symphony and Circle the City, an organization dedicated to providing healthcare to unhoused individuals in Phoenix’s Maricopa County. Giving a much-needed voice to people for whom climate change is an acutely experienced daily reality, these recordings are punctuated by Stewart’s original texts, which themselves echo and deconstruct elements of the four poems Vivaldi wrote as the basis for his concertos. These elements come together on Seasons of Change to explore the question: Who will climate change erase first?
Stewart embarked on a mini-tour of Seasons of Change in April 2025 under the auspices of the Gateways Music Festival, with stops including the Eastman School of Music, New York’s Kaufman Music Center, Princeton University, and Rutgers University. Seasons of Change premiered at the Phoenix Symphony in 2024. He will be performing a chamber music version with Sybarite5 in Fall 2025.
Seasons of Change includes public conversation and recorded interviews with the unhoused population around the heavy impact of climate change on their daily lives. This album features the voices of individuals experiencing homelessness, captured through a partnership between the Phoenix Symphony and Circle the City. During this collaboration, participants shared their reflections with Curtis. Circle the City, dedicated to providing healthcare to unhoused individuals in Maricopa County, has welcomed Phoenix Symphony musicians for regular visits to their sites and patients. These recordings were created in partnership with the Phoenix Symphony.
