The Capitol Theatre Season Series presents John Reischman and the Jaybirds Friday, October 21 at 8 p.m.
As one of the acoustic world’s top-ranked mandolin players and composers, veteran artist John Reischman is renowned for his exquisite taste, tone and impeccable musicianship. His mastery of the instrument is showcased today in his powerful bluegrass band, John Reischman and the Jaybirds.
The Jaybirds’ most recent album Vintage and Unique is now available. Their previous CD Field Guide was nominated for a Juno in the Roots and Traditional Group category for 2002.
Reischman’s synthesis of a wide range of genres was honed over more than two decades of performing beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. As an original member of the legendary Tony Rice Unit, Reischman helped to define the “new acoustic” instrumental scene in the early 1980s with appearances on the band’s groundbreaking Rounder albums Still Inside and Backwaters.
He cemented his reputation touring and recording for many years with the Bay Area’s eclectic Good Ol’ Persons before moving to Vancouver in the early 1990s to pursue a solo career.
John Reischman and the Jaybird’s latest release, Vintage and Unique, is an album ranging from old-time-infused bluegrass to innovative instrumentals and contemporary ballads. The band’s original numbers are rounded out with unique takes on timeless, rarely-heard classics.
Like the mandolinist at its helm, the group fashions a stylish, elegant take on bluegrass that is at once innovative and unadorned, sophisticated and stripped-down, happily old-fashioned, yet unselfconsciously new. To see their live show is to believe it.
A genial blend of storytelling and side-show humor provides the backdrop to their studied performance of original songs, instrumentals, and newly arranged traditional material.
Hailing from the variegated ranks of the contemporary West Coast acoustic music scene, each of these ‘birds has certainly earned his wings: the list of projects they have contributed to over the years is nothing less than a shortlist of acoustic power houses.
Together, their seamless ensemble work makes for one of the freshest, most tasteful band-sounds on the folk and bluegrass circuit today.
Tickets are $20 adult and $16 full time student and are available at the Capitol box office. Charge by phone to 250-352-6363 or buy online capitoltheatre.bc.ca.