Field Hall Presents: Jayme Stone’s “Folklife”

Description

Stemming from the Lomax Project, Jayme Stone’s Folklife treats old field recordings not as time capsules, but as heirloom seeds passed down from a bygone generation. Planting these sturdy seeds in modern soil, this versatile gathering of musicians has cultivated vibrant Sea Island spirituals, Creole calypsos, and stomp-down Appalachian dance tunes for contemporary listeners. Their concerts and educational programs are moving, inventive, and participatory experiences that prove folk songs are indeed perennials for the people. Folklife the album is out now on Borealis Records. www.fieldhallevents.org/tickets 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. 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.