Macie Stewart

Macie Stewart is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter, and improviser based in Chicago, IL. Heralded for her versatility, Stewart works with piano, violin, guitar, voice, and synthesizers, effortlessly traversing styles and scenes. A distinguished, go-to collaborator who Pitchfork credits with “making some of the best tracks of the past five years transcendent,” Stewart’s deeply humanist and often otherworldly capacities in deep listening have shaped each collaboration as much as her technical prowess and ingenuity. Aptly called a “master of equilibrium” by DownBeat magazine, she has an uncanny ability to meet the needs of the music with precision and taste.

Stewart’s latest release, When the Distance is Blue (International Anthem, 2025) is a cinematic, symphonic companion to the times we spend in-between. Rooted in Stewart’s prepared piano improvisations and string arrangements, the record is collaged with field recordings from a year on the road, giving shape to Stewart’s most striking work yet.

As a composer, Stewart’s work continues to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines. In 2021, she composed a piece for Hubbard Street Dance’s film, “Half of Us,” alongside Sima Cunningham. That same year, she worked with Sima Cunningham and Alex Grelle to produce a performance piece paying homage to Kate Bush. In 2022, Stewart composed the score for a 50-piece orchestra premiering the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Before I Was.” And in 2023, choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams enlisted Stewart to create a sound installation for her dreamlike performance piece, Hisako House. Most recently, Stewart was invited to compose a site-specific piece for the ESS Florisonic Installation at Lincoln Park Conservatory. As part of the longest running sound installation in North America, their twenty-minute composition titled “The World Doubles in Size” played in the conservatory’s fern room from September through November of 2024.

Stewart appears on records with International Anthem’s Makaya McCraven, Resavoir, Bex Burch, and Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra. Rooted in Chicago’s jazz and improvised music community, she was a member of Ken Vandermark’s avant-garde jazz group, Marker; co-created the improvised trio, The Few (with guitar player Steve Marquette and bassist Charlie Kirchen); and formed a duo project with cellist and sound artist, Lia Kohl (Macie Stewart & Lia Kohl).

In 2014, Stewart joined with Sima Cunningham to form their experimental duo project, Finom. Since then, the band has released four records, toured extensively, and is celebrated as an avant-pop, art rock phenomena all its own. Finom’s latest release, Not God (Joyful Noise Recordings, 2024) is ripe with the unmistakable harmonies, cutting lyricism, and sonic landscapes that have captivated local and international audiences alike since the band’s inception ten years ago.

Stewart has toured with Japanese Breakfast, The Weather Station, Kevin Morby, and Tweedy; performed strings for Reservoir, Lala Lala and Kara Jackson; and performed and arranged for SZA, Whitney, Mannequin Pussy, Tasha, and V.V. Lightbody. Fueled by what she describes as an essential cross-pollination of these projects and creative communities, Stewart released her solo debut Mouth Full of Glass (Orindal Records) in 2021. Self-recorded, self-arranged, and self-produced during the pandemic, Mouth Full of Glass received high praise, culminating in an international tour and a self-arranged 12-piece orchestral production of the record at Chicago’s Epiphany Center for the Arts. Praised by Pitchfork for its blooming string arrangements, poetic lyricism, and “lush, baroque-tinged folk,” Stewart’s debut showcased an artist adept at shaping others’ sounds settling into her a voice all her own.