The Anatomy of Melancholy Emily Stewart

• 1 Milk & Honey 04:52
• 2 At a Bus Stop 01:56
• 3 The 39 00:58
• 4 Finnieston Crane 04:48
• 5 All My Griefs 00:57
• 6 Amygdala 01:37
• 7 Phantasy 02:51
• 8 Memory 02:52
• 9 Fair 03:09
• 10 Accompaniment in Broken Triads 01:25
• 11 Sinesinese 03:51
• 12 The Earth a Moon 05:24
• 13 The Chess Game 03:56
• 14 The Hidden Kingdom 04:55
• 15 All My Joys 00:55
• 16 Bruma - Perpetuum Mobile 03:47
• 17 My Melancholy Baby 02:25
• 18 Love, a Cause 03:48
• Total Runtime 54:26

Info for The Anatomy of Melancholy

It’s not just that you’ll think: Wait, don’t I know that name… “Emily Stewart”? You’ll also feel like you’ve heard that music before. You have to have had! Except that The Anatomy of Melancholy is actually Emily Stewart’s debut album. Born in London and raised in Costa Rica, the violinist and composer Emily Stewart now lives in Vienna. She regularly tours with the celebrated Austrian popstar Anja Plaschg (a.k.a. Soap&Skin), the Scottish indie pop group Belle and Sebastian, and with the Swedish jazz pianist and composer Jan Lundgren. Here’s her first own album then, which is an utterly convincing and eclectic combination of classical, jazz, and folk elements with a dash of improvisation and a soupçon of a singer-songwriter‘s perspective. It’s a musical narrative based on Robert Burton’s 1621 tome of the same name: a continuous shift from longing to melancholy with stops everywhere between.

Artist’s Note: The Anatomy of Melancholy is an intimate album of contemporary chamber music written for violin, cello and double bass, interspersed with short passages of spoken word and songs with piano accompaniment. The pieces are a mix of arrangements, original compositions and improvisations that although new, invoke familiar sounds from the past. Much like the fanciful whims of a child, I have taken my music picks freely, arranging some pieces from Béla Bartòk's Mikrokosmos, but also songs by Jackson C. Frank and Ernie Burnett. My own compositions borrow unabashedly from ideas across the musical spectrum as well as from my own multicultural background. At its core though the album stays true to itself as it presents an introspective cornucopia of melancholy, minimalist music. It is an album about longing and vulnerability and laying one's soul bare.

Emily Stewart, violin, viola
Lukas Lauermann, cello
Philipp Kienberger, double bass
Lauri Elling, narrator

Emily Stewart
he Anatomy of Melancholy is an intimate album of contemporary chamber music written for violin, cello and double bass, interspersed with short passages of spoken word and songs with piano accompaniment. The pieces are a mix of arrangements, original compositions and improvisations that although new, invoke familiar sounds from the past. Much like the fanciful whims of a child, I have taken my music picks freely, arranging some pieces from Béla Bartòk's Mikrokosmos, but also songs by Jackson C. Frank and Ernie Burnett. My own compositions borrow unabashedly from ideas across the musical spectrum as well as from my own multicultural background. At its core though the album stays true to itself as it presents an introspective cornucopia of melancholy, minimalist music. It is an album about longing and vulnerability and laying one's soul bare.

Booklet for The Anatomy of Melancholy