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​​Cellar Music is delighted to release The Lighting Of The Lamps, from acclaimed tenorist Grant Stewart. A quintet session that sheds light on some unfamiliar corners of jazz history, The Lighting Of The Lamps features regular collaborators, bassist David Wong, pianist Tardo Hammer and drummer Phil Stewart. The group is joined by special guest trumpeter Bruce Harris for a searching, straight-ahead date. Stewart, Toronto-born, former DownBeat Rising Star and collaborator with the likes of Jimmy Cobb, Harold Mabern, Louis Hayes and Clark Terry, returns to Cellar Music following his successful 2020 release of Rise and Shine. But listening back to this session on a gray, New York afternoon, Stewart was reminded not of daybreak but rather, dusk. “For me the poem really captures the feeling of life in the city, and of the sense of something beginning,” says Stewart. “For us musicians, quite often our day begins when the lamps are lit,” as dusk moves slowly into evening time and the city becomes a buzz of activity once more. The album marked another opportunity for Stewart to record in the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. “It always feels like magic,” Stewart says of the chapel-like studio that has birthed any number of iconic jazz recordings since Rudy van Gelder opened it in 1959. That aura characterizes the exchanges here, as solo contributions carry a sheen added by the beautiful acoustic and esteemed surroundings.