Jayme Stone is a musician, composer, instigator, producer, and educator. On any given day, you might find him in his studio reworking a little-known hymn learned from a field recording, producing a session with musicians from Bamako or New York, creating experimental soundscapes, or tucking his kids in on time so he can get back to writing the next verse of a new song.
As a young banjoist, Stone was obsessed with learning from both traditional players and modern masters. He quickly assimilated his endless fascinations—from learning an Ali Farka Touré song to playing free-improvised music. In his late teens, Stone spent hours at the headphone station of his local record shop listening deeply to different kinds of music. He was interested in the “heart and guts” of what he heard—the warmth and grit of folk songs, the camaraderie and risk in jazz, the dynamics of chamber music, the cyclical rhythms of West Africa—but no one genre felt quite like his own. He might’ve forever remained a listener were he not compelled to make the music he heard in his head.
Stone has developed a process of trawling for understudied sounds in the more arcane corners of the world to see how they’ll land in his musical universe. His many collaborators have included Margaret Glaspy, Moira Smiley, Tim O’Brien, Bruce Molsky, Julian Lage, Dom Flemons, Bassekou Kouyate, and more. He has made an album every two or three years—seven total. Albums like Africa to Appalachia, a polyrhythmic tale of two continents; the Lomax Project, which re-imagines songs collected by American folklorist Alan Lomax; and most recently, Folklife, a companion album to the latter that treats old field recordings not as time capsules, but as heirloom seeds planted in modern soil.
Other career highlights for Stone include winning two Juno Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards; being featured on NPR, BBC, and the CBC; and performing thousands of concerts at places like the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, Library of Congress, Bumbershoot, Rockygrass, Celtic Connections, Vancouver Folk Festival, Lotus Festival, Chicago World Music Festival, Montréal Jazz Festival, and more.
Monday, February 24 2020
8:00pm (doors open at 7:00pm)
Mel Lehan Hall at St. James - 3214 West 10th Avenue
Tickets for $24 / $20 members
Available online at www.roguefolk.bc.ca in person at Highlife Records and Tapestry Music
or call the Rogue Ticket Hotline at 604-736-3022
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