by: Jasper intern Chelx Bundick
West Columbia’s Mount Tabor Lutheran Church (1000 B Ave, West Columbia, SC 29169) will be showcasing the phenomenal movements of musicians Jesse Jones and Craig Butterfield.
Occurring Sunday, January 31th from 3PM to 5PM, the performance will be free admission and feature musical assembles from their debut album Stickerfoot along with their latest project Pisces.
Teaming up just over a year ago, the duo met while teaching at the University of South Carolina. When discovering their mutual contemporary interest in the growing American style of music known as ”New Grass,” the two joined forces.
Classically trained, their bluegrass compositions incorporate implement the foundations of classical music to the resonances of jazz and blues. Influenced by artists such as Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Bela Fleck and Sam Bush, the duo composed their first album Stickerfoot last year.
Recorded only 12 months later, their second album Pisces brings life to century old forms of compositional writing with arrangements like Rondo a la Kentucky. By interpreting the works of Bach, Butterfield says the two took hold of the concept of instrumental texture to compose the new album. As a bassist, Butterfield magnified Bach’s writing for the left hand on piano and it’s conjuring of the “bass” role and Jones inversely.
“He has a lot more formal training in the process than I do,” says Butterfield, “ but I think our writing styles complement each other quite well.”
Jones, specializing in the mandolin, graduated from Cornell University, where he became a Doctor of Musical Arts in music composition. Studying composition alongside the like of Steven Stucky. Roberto Sierra and Xak Bjerken, he now resides in Georgia as Professor of Composition at the University of Georgia.
In receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship and Elliot Carter Rome Prize, Jones has performed across the national front, attributing his talent as a vocalist in pair. Featured in the nation wide radiobroadcast show Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, his talent and compositions have aired to an audience over eight million listeners.
In teaming up with the 2015 Jasper Magazines Artist of the Year, Jones and Butterfield unite to display their pioneering infusion of bluegrass and classical rendition. In presenting the original compositions from their albums Stickerfoot and Pisces, Jesse Jones and Craig Butterfield will perform at the Mt. Tabor Lutheran Church on Jan. 31st at 3p.m.