soundstewArt

Mark Stewart is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, song leader, composer, improviser and instrument designer that has been heard around the world performing old and new music. Since 1998 he has recorded, toured and been Musical Director with Paul Simon.  A founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the duo Polygraph Lounge with keyboard & theremin wizard Rob Schwimmer, Mark has also worked with Steve Reich, Sting, Anthony Braxton, Bob Dylan, Wynton Marsalis, Meredith Monk, Stevie Wonder, Phillip Glass, Iva Bittova, Bruce Springsteen, Terry Riley, Ornette Coleman, Don Byron, Joan Baez, Hugh Masakela, Paul McCartney, Cecil Taylor, Bill Frisell, Jimmy Cliff, the Everly Brothers, Steve Gadd, John Adams, Fred Frith, Alison Krauss, David Krakauer, Bobby McFerrin, Patty Scialfa, David Byrne, James Taylor, The Roches, Aaron Neville, Bette Midler, and Marc Ribot. He has worked extensively with composer Elliot Goldenthal on music for the films The Glorias, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Across the Universe, Titus, The Butcher Boy, The Good Thief, In Dreams and Heat.

He has designed instruments for Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, Midsummer Nights Dream & Theater For A New Audience's production of King Lear, and is the inventor of the WhirlyCopter, a bicycle-powered Pythagorean choir of singing tubes and the Big Boing, a 24 ft. sonic banquet table Mbira that seats 30 children playing 490 found objects. Mark is a co-founder (w/ Karen Curlee) of soundstewArt, a company that designs & builds immersive musical environments & instruments for all to play upon while presenting workshops to facilitate just that. Since 2012, he has been the Artistic Director of Guitar Mash, leading the participatory communal Urban Campfires together with renowned artists sharing their favorite songs and life stories, and is a Visiting Lecturer in musical instrument design at MIT. He is also is curator at MASS MoCA of the immersive Gunnar Schonbeck exhibit of musical instruments.

He lives in Brooklyn, NY and North Adams, Massachusetts making his living playing and writing popular music, semi-popular music and unpopular music, whilst designing instruments that everyone can play.

Karen Curlee is the co-founder and business manager of soundstewArt & has spent nearly 3 decades appearing in chorus and feature roles on Broadway in six long-running shows (A Chorus Line, Cats, Me and My Girl, Blackstone, The Tap Dance Kid and Showboat ). She has played lead roles in musicals off- Broadway and regionally; roles include Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Marta in Company, Velma Kelly in Chicago, and Kate in The Taffetas. She has worked with many of Broadway’s greatest contributors, including Michael Bennett, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, and Gillian Lind. She can heard on cast albums of The Tap Dance Kid and The Taffetas. She has appeared in short films and commercials, and has choreographed Xanadu and Sweeney Todd for Piper Productions. 

Karen hails from California, where she graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in theater. She completed an Arts Administration Certificate Program at New York University while performing on Broadway for four years in Hal Prince’s Showboat. 

After performing on Broadway, Karen transitioned into arts education. She is co- director of Together in Dance, a dance and musical theater education company that reaches more than 4000 NYC children and teens per year. Karen creates residency designs, facilitates professional development and family workshops, and mentors teaching artists. She has directed numerous youth musical theater productions, including 1776, An Immigration Experience, and Memphis. 

More recently, she has been performing various one-woman shows at venues in Michigan (the Ramsdell Performing arts Center), North Adams (Studio 9-produced by Mass MoCA), and Boca Raton.  This allows her a chance to revisit all her favorite composers and lyricists such as  Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Stephen Sondheim.