Nick Jaina, Music Performance and Reading:
Walnut Creek Library
1644 N. Broadway, Walnut Creek
Wednesday, April 27th, 2016
6:30pm – 7:30pm | FreeMusician and author Nick Jaina will give a unique performance of storytelling and song at the Walnut Creek Library on Wednesday, April 27, at 6:30 pm. Jaina‘s live performance is an amalgamation of all he has learned from composing for dance and film, all the songs he wrote while touring the country with his band, and all the stories he has compiled in his book, Get It While You Can.
Jaina‘s performance is not like a normal music show or a reading. Jaina loops electric guitar passages, mixing in sounds from distant rocket launches played from his phone into the pickups of his guitar. After creating a bed of sound, he reads short passages from his book, such as unsent love letters, or chronicles of Don Quixote-like figures who tried to sail across oceans. The performance is soulful and engaging. The stories alternate between funny and beautiful. The format is almost like a podcast such as Radiolab or This American Life, reaching the listener on many different emotional and intellectual levels.
Nick Jaina is a musician and writer from Portland, Oregon. His most recent album, Primary Perception, was released in April 2013 on Fluff and Gravy Records. Jaina is a co-founder and musical director of the Satellite Ballet and Collective in New York City. He has composed the music for three ballets and three contemporary dances with that group, featuring dancers from the New York City Ballet, Ten Hairy Legs, and Julliard, performing at the Baryshnikov Center and the Joyce Theater. Their most recent performance was two sold-out shows at Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 2014. Of that show, the New York Times wrote, “[The] pure, pungent, earthy music for strings, piano, and percussion… was the most physically bracing part of the night.” Jaina released his first book, Get It While You Can, a work of non-fiction, through Perfect Day Publishing in January 2015. It is a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Awards.