{"id":448,"date":"2020-11-24T08:55:08","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T13:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/?post_type=cu-stories&p=448"},"modified":"2020-11-24T10:48:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T15:48:09","slug":"musical-marvel-jesse-stewart","status":"publish","type":"cu-stories","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/ravenmag\/story\/musical-marvel-jesse-stewart\/","title":{"rendered":"Surround Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Stewart<\/a> is an amateur. He\u2019s a multi-talented performer and composer, sure, as well as a Juno Award-winning percussionist and a music professor at Carleton. And he has built more instruments than he can count, including a xylophone made of ice and another from books.<\/p>\n

But Stewart is an amateur, nonetheless, in the truest sense of the word: a devotee, an admirer. He is in a steady state of awe at the melodies and rhythms hidden inside everything, just waiting to be tapped out.<\/p>\n

Under the banner of his interdisciplinary We Are All Musicians<\/a> (WAAM) project, Stewart has long sought collaborators among people who have limited opportunities to make music. His latest creation, WAAM WEB \u2014 48 aluminum discs built into a modular wooden frame, and an app to play them \u2014 is a natural progression in an increasingly \u00a0digital world, allowing Stewart to orchestrate inclusive online jam sessions.<\/p>\n

\"Prof.

Prof. Jesse Stewart<\/p><\/div>\n

The largest disc is as wide as a yoga ball; the smallest has the diameter of a grapefruit. Mallets triggered by electromagnetic strikers are poised over the grey metal gongs, waiting for a command from \u2026 anyone, really. Which is the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic has the capacity to bring people together,\u201d he says, \u201ceven when it is mediated by computers and the internet.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the Before Times, Stewart was doing just that across the Carleton campus and beyond. He regularly staged pop-up interactive music installations<\/a> and worked, for example, with patients at Ottawa\u2019s Saint-Vincent Hospital who had limited motor control.<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s likely that hospitals and care facilities will be the last places to reopen to non-essential activities, Stewart applied to the university\u2019s COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Grants program to get the band back together in a unique way.<\/p>\n

Stewart\u2019s first few weeks of coronavirus quarantine consisted of recovery and rediscovery. After a successful operation to remove a benign brain tumour in February, he uploaded a musical video to Facebook every day for 40 days<\/a>.<\/p>\n