Jeff Warner in Concert
Jeff Warner is a personable scholar who, with modesty, humor, and understanding, brings to vivid life the ordinary people of the 19th century. As a child, he absorbed stories and songs from his parents and accompanied them across the country as they made pioneer recordings of rural traditional singers. Since then, he has continued to collect fine songs wherever he lives, from sources up and down the Eastern Seaboard and the England. Like his parents, Warner draws from a wondrous well: chanteys and work-songs from the Outer Banks and the deep South, Adirondack lumber camp ditties, New England songs of whaling and the Revolutionary War, and ballads and lilts of the British Isles. With a natural voice and easy-going style on banjo, guitar, and concertina, he inhabits these fine old songs and dance tunes as few others can. The Chronicle-Herald of Halifax, Nova Scotia, lauds his firsthand experience, married to complete mastery of traditional music, and allied to a natural voice and dry, understated humor in the American vein of Missourian Harry Truman and Mississippian Mark Twain. Warner has made irreplaceable field collections available to the public (as editor of Traditional American Folk Songs: From the Anne and Frank Warner Collection and as producer of the CD set Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, from his parents early recordings), and he keeps them fresh in his own performances. His dedication is prodigious: in addition to concerts, recordings, and publications, he is a Folklorist and Community Scholar of New Hampshire, an Arts Council Fellow, a gifted teacher and beloved performer at Ashokan, Mystic Seaport, and Old Sturbridge, and has toured widely for the Smithsonian. Jay Ungar and Molly Mason wrote: It was wonderful...your accessibility, teaching skills...and the way you wove songs with impeccable taste and timing. Thanks for giving so much of yourself. Warner is as much a treasure as the musical heritage he so generously shares. Please join the Folk Song Society in making him welcome! Tickets are available at Ludgate Farm Market, Ithaca Guitar Works, Greenstar Co-op, Small World Music, and, if any are left, at the door. You may also order tickets online and by mail: SASE to CFSC, PO Box 481, Ithaca, NY 14851. For information about the concert, contact
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