Jake Blount and Nic Gareiss and Simon Chrisman
Lansing's Nic Gareiss travels the world both performing and teaching dance. Each season, Nic gathers very talented friends and plans a Michigan tour, making a Friday night stop at The Ten Pound Fiddle. This year, Nic and Old Time musician Jake Blount and hammered dulcimer player Simon Chrisman will combine their sound and talent to present a night of exceptional performance pieces.
“With Simon Chrisman on hammered dulcimer and Nic Gareiss providing foot percussion, Blount’s set provided one of the highlights of the entire weekend. I was mesmerized by their performance.” – No Depression
Jake Blount, Nic Gareiss, and Simon Chrisman, award-winning folk and world music+dance performers, have joined forces combining vibrant synergy, deft movements, and stories long untold. Through traditional songs familiar and arcane, this new trio celebrates the vivacious rhythms and deep roots of America’s eldest musics and movements.
Jake Blount (they/he, Providence, RI) is a singer and multi-instrumentalist described by NPR as “an Afrofuturist in roots-music garb.” In Jake’s hands, the banjo and fiddle become ceremonial objects used to channel the insurgent creativity of their forbearers. A winner of the 2021 Steve Martin Banjo Prize and a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist, American Songwriter has dubbed him the “King of Roots.” Jake is currently a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at Brown University.
Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (he/they, Lansing, MI) has been named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” and has been hailed by The New York Times for his “dexterous melding of Irish and Appalachian dance.” Nic’s work draws on clog, flatfoot, and step dance vocabulary, queering the sensory: melding sight, sound, and touch; and merging music, movement, and ethnography. In 2020, Gareiss received the Michigan Heritage Award, the highest honor their home state bestows on traditional artists.
Hammer dulcimer virtuoso Simon Chrisman (he/him, Roseburg, OR) brings an unusual style to an instrument previously thought to have limited range and technique. His inventive virtuosic touch and sophisticated rhythmic sensibilities are redefining the dulcimer, “combining chamber music’s finely calibrated arrangements with bluegrass’s playful virtuosity and pop music’s melodic resourcefulness.” (The Boston Herald)
Blount, Gareiss, and Chrisman’s years of experience as performers, educators, and scholars in their respective traditions have drawn them close to the spontaneous creative force at the heart of music-making. The trio brings the power of those fresh bonds to bear in a new performance: a paean to both strong roots and musical co-infatuations traced in wood, flesh, and gesture.
www.jakeblount.com / @jake.m.blount
www.nicgareiss.com / @nicgareisslfi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztq2YD56UX8?si=zFbHFHQZd6BDxPpT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJwBCN00ic
“With Simon Chrisman on hammered dulcimer and Nic Gareiss providing foot percussion, Blount’s set provided one of the highlights of the entire weekend. I was mesmerized by their performance.” – No Depression
Jake Blount, Nic Gareiss, and Simon Chrisman, award-winning folk and world music+dance performers, have joined forces combining vibrant synergy, deft movements, and stories long untold. Through traditional songs familiar and arcane, this new trio celebrates the vivacious rhythms and deep roots of America’s eldest musics and movements.
Jake Blount (they/he, Providence, RI) is a singer and multi-instrumentalist described by NPR as “an Afrofuturist in roots-music garb.” In Jake’s hands, the banjo and fiddle become ceremonial objects used to channel the insurgent creativity of their forbearers. A winner of the 2021 Steve Martin Banjo Prize and a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist, American Songwriter has dubbed him the “King of Roots.” Jake is currently a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at Brown University.
Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (he/they, Lansing, MI) has been named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” and has been hailed by The New York Times for his “dexterous melding of Irish and Appalachian dance.” Nic’s work draws on clog, flatfoot, and step dance vocabulary, queering the sensory: melding sight, sound, and touch; and merging music, movement, and ethnography. In 2020, Gareiss received the Michigan Heritage Award, the highest honor their home state bestows on traditional artists.
Hammer dulcimer virtuoso Simon Chrisman (he/him, Roseburg, OR) brings an unusual style to an instrument previously thought to have limited range and technique. His inventive virtuosic touch and sophisticated rhythmic sensibilities are redefining the dulcimer, “combining chamber music’s finely calibrated arrangements with bluegrass’s playful virtuosity and pop music’s melodic resourcefulness.” (The Boston Herald)
Blount, Gareiss, and Chrisman’s years of experience as performers, educators, and scholars in their respective traditions have drawn them close to the spontaneous creative force at the heart of music-making. The trio brings the power of those fresh bonds to bear in a new performance: a paean to both strong roots and musical co-infatuations traced in wood, flesh, and gesture.
www.jakeblount.com / @jake.m.blount
www.nicgareiss.com / @nicgareisslfi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztq2YD56UX8?si=zFbHFHQZd6BDxPpT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJwBCN00ic