THE INSTIGATOR: Jayme Stone Plays Bach on the Banjo

“Stone combines a jazz musician’s sense of timing and sureness of touch with a pop musician’s brevity and directness.” --The Guardian

JAYME STONE HAS been called “the Yo Yo Ma of the banjo.”  A Canadian-born composer and instrumentalist of the “jazz-world-fusion” variety, Stone was formerly a member of the group Tricycle, while in his own right he won the 2008 Juno Award for Instrumental Album of the Year for his solo album The Utmost.  With Mansa Sissoko, he won the 2009 Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year for their album Africa to Appalachia.

What Stone is doing, along with giving the world some brilliant music to listen to, is rescuing his instrument—as sophisticated as any other—from a sort of ghetto in which some have placed it for generations.  “Once again,” wrote the Ottawa Citizen, “Stone makes you forget the instrument’s hillbilly twang: this is banjo like you’ve never heard it before.”

This is what Stone—as much a cultural instigator as master musician-- has said about playing Bach on the banjo. "I was listening to Bach's French Suites while cooking.  The performance had such a lilt to it that I literally wanted to dance.  It was an epiphany moment.  Bach used European folk dance forms to inform his own music. I realized I could explore folk dances in my own way, but with a worldwide scope."   

With dance as his guide, Stone launched a virtual journey that ended in a new album, Room of Wonders, that drops on March 15, 2011. (Check www.jaymestone.com for more info.)  Stone turned mysterious melodies into rocking tunes and crafted lush, edgy originals, with some of North America’s best acoustic musicians for companions.  We recently had a chance to ask Stone about his approach to his instrument and its repertoire.

CLASSICAL TV:   Can you recount your original impulse to play Bach on the banjo?

JAYME STONE:   I was a latecomer to classical music and Bach was my inroad.  I first heard the Cello Suites at sixteen and was smitten.  Not having grown up with classical music, Bach was fresh to me and felt like the hippest, most captivating music I'd heard.  I took to learning the Prelude from the first Cello Suite in G major and, as if by design, it worked beautifully on the banjo.  Transcribing Bach has continued to be one of my favourite pastimes and in the last couple of years I've been performing pieces and working on them with other musicians.

CTV:   How does playing Bach on the banjo fit into your other musical interests and investigations?  What do you hope comes through to a listener, from your renditions of Bach on the banjo?

JS:   As a musician, listening to Bach is something like being fascinated by the stars and then being handed a telescope.  Everything about music that I revel in is so clear in his music, so precise, so purposeful.  As a banjo player, I'm particularly attracted to the symmetry of his music, the perpetual motion of his lines and the endless variation.  I recently read a quote of Béla Bartók saying that "some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach."  There's a depth to his music that somehow captures the intrinsic perfection of the world.  In a way, I hope that my playing gets out of its own way so people can simply hear the beauty of the music.  It's also so much fun to play these pieces!

CTV:   Is it your own transcription that you’re playing?  In other words, how does Bach’s score-- which in the case of a movement from a French suite, is for keyboard-- map onto the banjo’s particular capabilities?

JS:  It's my own transcription.  I think Bach's music is so well-conceived that it can find a home on any instrument, but it will transform that instrument in the process.  It's like a lens to see your instrument in new ways.  Though maybe more like a kaleidoscope:  patterns and ideas I never would have dreamed of turn out to be sitting right there on the banjo!  There are passages that seem like they were written for the banjo and others that have forever changed how I view the instrument.  The French Suites, being comprised of dance movements, has a naturally rhythmic drive that works well on the banjo.  I'm now in the process of learning the complete French Suite No. 6 and the variety of rhythm, ornamentation and melody is astounding.

CTV:   What do you find in Bach that’s so appealing to you?

JS:  I didn't grow with classical music at all.  In fact, the first time I went to the symphony was in my twenties!  Bach's music is just such a wellspring.  There's just so much of it and I never tire of listening to the same pieces.  I hear new things every time and find new connections, new voices, new wonders.

Upcoming tour dates for Jayme Stone include New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Troy, New York; Lyons, Colorado; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario, and more. To learn more, go to www.jaymestone.com