Mark Stewart is bringing Notes of a Native Song to Luminato’s Spiegeltent at David Pecaut Square.
Mark Stewart, the Tony-winning artist who works professionally as Stew, brings Notes of a Native Song to Luminato's Spiegeltent at David Pecaut Square.
A rock song cycle co-written with longtime collaborator Heidi Rodewald and inspired by the American writer and activist James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Song will be performed by Stew and the Negro Problem. We spoke to Stewart about his current passions.
What he's watching: "The Criterion Collection is porn for film geeks, so any chance I get I'm wallowing in the heady smut of Ken Loach, Bergman and Godard."
What he's reading: "I'm rereading Harold Cruse's The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, soon to be a Mel Brooks musical. Just kidding, but I wish I were not."
What he's listening to: "Most of my listening is spent indoctrinating my seven-year-old to make sure he will have proper musical taste, which is to say he shall be thoroughly unconscious of any music that happened after 1979. Via him, I'm rediscovering the monumental genius of the Supremes while wondering how songs could have been so brilliantly confectionery yet impossibly deep."
Notes of a Native Song, June 15 to 18, 8 p.m. $29. Spiegeltent, David Pecaut Square, 416 368 3100 or luminatofestival.com
Brad Wheeler