Phil Farnsworth

Didi Stewart

Associate Professor
Affiliated Departments
Voice
Faculty Bio E-Mail
dstewart@berklee.edu
Telephone
617-747-8246

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Didi Stewart is an associate professor in the Voice Department at Berklee College of Music. A two-time winner of the Boston Music Award for best female vocalist, Stewart has been a longtime fixture on the Boston music scene. Her first original rock band, Didi Stewart and the Amplifiers, recorded the album Begin Here for Kirshner/Epic Records in 1983. Her second band, Girls' Night Out, was one of the top-grossing acts in New England and was named best unsigned band by Musician magazine in 1986.

Throughout the 1990s, Stewart was known her ongoing series of songwriter tributes, celebrating such composers as Laura Nyro, Carole King, Randy Newman, Jacques Brel, Rodgers & Hart, and Cole Porter. The critically acclaimed An Evening of Burt Bacharach and Hal David won a Boston Magazine award for best club performance. A prolific composer for film and television, Stewart's songs have been featured on Melrose Place, One Life to Live, The Young and the Restless, Touched by an Angel, Dark Skies, Any Day Now, The Twilight Zone, and The Beast. Her most recent album, the country-pop excursion Harmonyville, was released in 2006.

Career Highlights
  • Leader on two albums of original songs, Begin Here and One True Heart
  • Extensive club and concert appearances, including current performances with Didi Stewart and Friends
  • House vocalist for Handsome Brothers Music Productions

 

Awards
  • Boston Music Awards, best female rock vocalist (two-time winner)
  • Encore Award, best new cabaret performer
In Their Own Words

"I think of myself as more a mentor than a teacher, and I'm teaching the kids everything I learned through trial, error, and pain. For instance, it doesn't matter if some really great singer happens to go on right before them. I'm finding that a lot of my voice students want to belt like Janis Joplin, and I used to be that way. I used to love screaming my guts out. But if you're going to do that for five or six weeks on the road, you have to know how to survive it."

"Working with the students has made me more of a risk taker. I thought that teaching was like finally becoming a grownup, but it's just the opposite: reconnecting with my adolescence. The only problem is when the students come to a show and I start thinking, 'Whoops, better not grab the mike cord while I'm singing. I just told the class not to do that.'"

 

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