Author, storyteller, spiritual activist Stephen Jenkinson, with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins and band reprise Nights of Grief & Mystery in new North American Tour that comes to Kingston’s Octave Theatre on September 16th.
RELEASE — Stephen Jenkinson is at it again. More accurately, he’s still going at it hammer and tongs, all the while shouldering a new book and a bigger band to bring the 2019 Nights of Grief & Mystery Tour to communities throughout North America.
On the heels of last year’s 25-city North American tour, 10 shows in the UK this spring, and a recent tour in Iceland, this year the band (plus a new bassist) takes the tour across the continent again to a new roster of cities.
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From mid-September through November 2019, the tour will travel through Ontario and Québec, then head down into the eastern US for gig loop starting in Maine, gigging
along the way to Virginia, west to Nashville and then north to Minneapolis. The tour then heads to British Columbia, crosses the border into Washington, and then heads through Montana, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and finally west to California. 25 cities all counted.
For those of already familiar with Stephen’s work, including last year’s Nights of Grief & Mystery Tour North American tour, you’ll need no encouragement to purchase tickets now for his upcoming event here in KINGSTON scheduled for SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 at the OCTAVE THEATRE.
Nights of Grief and Mystery weaves together the extraordinary talents and skills of internationally renowned author, teacher, storyteller, and cultural activist Stephen Jenkinson with those of Toronto-based singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins and his band. This an evening for young folk and old folk, for elders in training—an event of interest to parents and grandparents, teachers, scholars, health care professionals, clergy, counselors, and anyone else pondering matters around human development, rites of passage, aging, and wisdom.
Stephen describes these events like this:
Concerts for Turbulent Times. We might not be considered poets, but the evenings are poetic. They are musical and grave and raucous and stilling, which probably means they are theatrical. They are nights devoted to the ragged mysteries of being human, and so grief and endings of all kinds appear. Sonorous hours and rapture, served by whatever talents of tongue and timbre have been granted the band, by the reckless labours of friends and accomplices who fashion genuine gigs in their hometowns from their dreams for a better day, and by the willingness of the sold out houses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and the USA to be drawn into wonder and poetry and the kenning.
They are nights in which love letters to life are written and read. There’s some boldness in them. They have that tone. These nights have the mark of our time upon them, and they’ve become timely, urgent, alert, steeped in mortal mystery, quixotic, with some swagger. What would you call such a thing? Nights of Grief & Mystery. Part poetry, part lamentation, part book reading, part ribaldry, part concert, part lifting the mortal veil and learning the mysteries there…
Admission to this event is $40 plus tax & fees. Additional details about how obtain tickets for this showing, and more can be found at eventbrite.ca. There you’ll also find descriptions, reviews, videos, media interviews, tour schedules, and more providing essential information about Stephen and his extraordinary work.
MORE: Listen to the album recorded from the 2017 international tour, watch the award-winning documentary film about the tour, or visit the tour website.
About Stephen Jenkinson
Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, RSW, is an internationally known teacher, author, storyteller, farmer, sculptor, musician, spiritual activist, ceremonialist, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School in Ontario, Canada.
He holds Masters’ degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). A highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader, his work has been featured in national radio and television documentaries on care of the dying and wilderness creativity. He is the author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, the award-winning book about grief, and dying, and the great love of life. He is the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary, Griefwalker.
He brings teachings of the ramshackling kind, about honour and grace under pressure, about how we might learn our darkening times. His new book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, wonders about elderhood in an age of age-intolerance, and about the withering World Tree.
About Gregory Hoskins
Often described with epithets like “best kept secret”, “unsung”, and “an artist that has flown under the radar”, Gregory Hoskins’ career spans 11 recordings over 27 years and record deals on three continents. Hoskin’s lyrics and voice tend to break and bind at the same time, songs steeped in the drama of living awake with one foot in the sorrow of it all and the other in the beauty of it all…and he does it over propulsive grooves, brooding electric guitar work, and rich sonics.
Material from his most recent release is featured in the Nights of Grief and Mystery. Please visit gregoryhoskins.bandcamp.com to listen.
Stephen and Gregory are thrilled to be joined on this tour by drummer Adam Bowman, keyboard/vocalist Lisa Hodgson, and bassist Colleen Hodgson.
Release and photo (cropped): submitted
