Jazz Articles about Grant Stewart

About Grant Stewart

Album Review

It is always a treat to hear a singer who trusts the song. On Hey Love!, recorded at Van Gelder Studios in October 2025, Lucy Yeghiazaryan takes the direct route, usually the most forgiving. There are no conceptual detours here, no attempts to modernize the Great American Songbook by dismantling it. Instead, Yeghiazaryan takes control of the tradition, accompanied by musicians who understand its swing. And it is a great group of players. Tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, who also co-arranged ...

Album Review

Lucy Yeghiazaryan: Hey Love!

Read "Hey Love!" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
June 19, 2026

The excellent New York-based singer Lucy Yeghiazaryan and her stellar band may have you thinking back to Carmen McRae in the 1950s as you listen to Hey Love!--groups with Wendell Marshall, Kenny Clarke, and other hard bop-era musicians. On her 2026 release, Yeghiazaryan has the ubiquitous Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums, with Tardo Hammer at the piano, Grant Stewart on tenor saxophone, and Bruce Harris on trumpet. Johnny O'Neal sings with her at the piano on ...

Album Review

Joan Fort: Hangin' In

Read "Hangin' In" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 13, 2026

Hangin' In is the second recording under his name by Spanish-born, Netherlands-based guitarist Joan Fort who shows on every one of the album's nine radiant and alluring themes--six of which he wrote--why his star is rapidly rising in the jazz world at large. Fort, who was not yet thirty years old when the album was recorded, already boasts an impressive resume that includes co-leadership of the Amsterdam-based collective Dam Jawn. Even more notable are Fort's remarkable command of ...

Album Review

Grant Stewart: Next Spring

Read "Next Spring" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
November 29, 2025

Grant Stewart's Next Spring reaffirms his position as a leading figure in the current mainstream jazz scene. With his strong tone and deeply swinging phrasing, Stewart again channels the legacies of Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, and Joe Henderson, yet his voice remains distinctly his own. Recorded at the iconic Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and supported by his longtime collaborators pianist Tardo Hammer, bassist Paul Sikivie, and drummer Phil Stewart, he crafts a set that feels both fresh ...

Album Review

Grant Stewart: Next Spring

Read "Next Spring" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 16, 2025

There aren't many jazz saxophonists who can hold the floor and the listener's ear through an entire album without ever sounding banal or redundant. Here is one who can. Next Spring is renowned tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart's fifth recording for Cory Weeds' Cellar Music Group, and if it includes any moments that are less than engaging, they are all but impossible to discern. Stewart's personal ingredient is consistency, an ability to conceive and convey fresh ideas in ...

Liner Notes

Reeds and Deeds: Cookin'

by C. Andrew Hovan
February 22, 2024

Chances are that if you're reading these notes right now you're more than a bit familiar with the talents of tenor saxophonists Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart and might even have picked up Wailin' (Criss 1258), their first effort together leading a quintet billed as Reeds and Deeds. As such, it would probably be redundant to go into detailed biographical sketches of each of these men. Suffice it to say that Alexander just might be one of the most recorded ...

Album Review

Mike Melito: To Swing Is The Thing

Read "To Swing Is The Thing" reviewed by David A. Orthmann

by David A. Orthmann
July 24, 2023

A sense of discovery, exhilaration, and depth are not qualities often induced by recent jazz recordings that showcase some of the once innovative, now commonplace styles from the mid-to-late twentieth century. There is no shortage of less-than-stellar releases that land squarely inside the bop/hard bop continuum. One notable exception to the abundance of mere competence is the body of work of drummer Mike Melito. Beginning in the late twentieth century, Melito has led several impressive recording dates ...