Chicago Reader - Macie Stewart gives her solo songs their grandest canvas yet
Photo by Ash Dye
In September 2021, Macie Stewart of Finom released her debut solo album, Mouth Full of Glass. She enriched its gentle, intimate songs with opulent strings and horns, but she’s infrequently performed those arrangements live due in part to the difficulty of bringing them to the stage. She assembled a sextet for a pair of release shows at the Hideout, then briefly toured her solo material in a trio with cellist Lia Kohl and keyboardist-guitarist Michael Hilger. On Friday, October 20, at Epiphany Center for the Arts, Stewart will premiere the most ambitious realization yet of Mouth Full of Glass, performing with a small orchestra.
“It feels very cathartic to be able to perform this thing that I recorded largely alone and in total isolation,” Stewart says. “To perform it with a group of 12 people that I admire and love dearly, it feels full circle—but also something that I never imagined would happen with the record.”