Zoë Johnstone Stewart is a performer and educator in the Baltimore area. She currently serves as Chair of the Preparatory Guitar Department at the Peabody Institute and director of the annual Fret Festival, Summer Guitar Intensive, as well as a member of the Conservatory faculty where she teaches the Guitar Pedagogy course for graduate and undergraduate guitar students. A dedicated and deeply experienced teacher, students from her programs have been admitted to and received scholarship offers from the Peabody Institute, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Berklee College of Music, Shenandoah Conservatory, and the University of South Carolina. In 2023 she was the recipient of the Suzuanne Seff Kuff Excellence in Teaching Award at the Peabody Preparatory.
She has performed extensively throughout the northeast United States as a collaborator in various chamber groups and, as a founding member of the Atlantic Guitar Quartet, has performed for the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, Ulster Chamber Music Series, Bloomsburg University, Marshall University, Loyola University, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and at the Engineers Club at the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, as an Artist-In-Residence. AGQ is an ensemble dedicated to the music of living composers, and in 2010 released their self-titled recording featuring new music by Olivier Bensa, Ronald Pearl, Vid Smooke, Christopher Gainey, and Arvo Pärt. Other notable performances include a solo outreach concert for Marlow Guitar International, and–as part of Baltimore Classical Guitar Society’s “Made in Baltimore” 30 anniversary commission concert–the world premiere of “Storied” by Edmund Scott Miller with guitarist Jeremy Lyons. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music and her master’s degree from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University.
Prior to her work at Peabody, Zoë founded the Evergreen Academy of Talent Education, a Suzuki guitar school in the Baltimore area. She has taught workshops and master classes at the Baltimore School for the Arts, Salisbury Guitar Festival, the New Jersey Music Educators Association Conference and Marshall University, and participated as an adjudicator for the Loudoun County Guitar Festival. Additionally, she is on the Board of Trustees of the Guitar Foundation of America, where she has served as a mentor for students in the GFA IDEA program and was a speaker for the Educator Hour and a panelist for Educator roundtables at the 2023 conference. She currently lives in Lutherville, Maryland with her husband and two sons.