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Nights of Grief and Mystery
September 13, 2023 @ 12:00 am
An improbable, ceremonial night of words, wonder and spirit work. These Nights have the mark of ourtime upon them, and they’re timely, urgent, alert, steeped in mortal mystery.
A Night of Grief & Mystery combines stories and observations by Canadian author/culture activist Stephen Jenkinson, drawn from his decades of work in palliative care, with original songs/sonics by Canadian recording artist Gregory Hoskins.
About Stephen Jenkinson
Stephen is a Harvard Educated Theologian, Culture Activist, founder of The Orphan Wisdom School. 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 of the World Tree. https://orphanwisdom.com/
About Gregory Hoskins
Gregory Hoskins’ career spans 11 recordings over 27 years and record deals on 3 continents. Hoskins’ lyrics and voice tend to break and bind at the same time in songs that are steeped in beauty and a muscular type of sorrow…and he does it over propulsive grooves, brooding electric guitar work, and rich sonics. He and the band use those sonic textures to underpin Jenkinson’s readings, too, using swirls of drums, bass, guitar textures, and synth throbs along with vocal harmonies, trumpet, and live looping. Material from his most recent release, Vain + Alone, is featured in the Nights of Grief and Mystery.
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Concerts for Turbulent Times they surely are. We aren’t poets – we wouldn’t claim that – but the evenings are poetic. They are musical and grave and raucous and stilling, which probably means they are theatrical. They are ceremonial, you could say. They are nights devoted to the ragged mysteries of being human, and so grief and endings of all kinds appear.