Curtis Stewart is an American composer, violinist, and multimedia artist whose work bridges classical music, improvisation, jazz, hip-hop, and storytelling. As he explains on his website, he “translates stories of American self-determination to the concert stage,” tackling questions of identity, history, and social justice. Equally active as a performer and curator, Stewart serves as artistic director of the American Composers Orchestra, is a professor at The Juilliard School, and is a member of the award-winning ensembles PUBLIQuartet and The Mighty Third Rail, championing new music that expands boundaries while remaining deeply expressive and communicative.

“I wouldn’t stop there: in the words of a KING” was commissioned by the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. As VSO Music Director Eric Jacobsen explains, “This piece, bringing together chorus and orchestra and inspired by the transformational words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is exactly the kind of bold, thoughtful, and socially resonant music that the Virginia Symphony Orchestra thrives on. Returning to work with Curtis feels both like a continuation of a shared journey and a powerful step forward, and I’m so excited to welcome him back.”

These performances mark the world premiere of “I wouldn’t stop there: in the words of a KING.” As Stewart describes the work,

I wouldn't stop there: in the words of a KING” for chorus and chamber orchestra is a paraphrase and fantasy on Martin Luther King's "Mountaintop" Speech—a meditation on the last public words he spoke in 1968 before his assassination. The opening of his speech notes the honor of witnessing humanity's struggle for freedom—in present tense. Given the option from God, he would stop at no other point in history but the time in which he lived, to participate in that pursuit of freedom.

This work depicts a struggle to feel ownership of our moment in history. It explores a will to resist the impulse to fast-forward, to pause, or to be stuck, looking to the past for relief; the music provides moments to breathe, alongside dreamlike atmospheres—akin to nightmares, the energy of running in what feels like a quicksand of forward motion. The text induces an idea from the original words of MLK—there is no time but now, both chaos and stillness exist at once, a splatter and glitch of genre quickly and unpredictably twitches between gospel, Stravinsky, disco, hip hop, funk, sacred, and atonal classical music—the throughline of determined and graceful rotating rhythmic progress remaining clear behind the jarring static shifts.

For the full text of Dr. King's speech, click here.