Live at The Du Bois Robeson People's Center

Jordan Perry

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Recording by Jesse Sheppard of 2.19.24 performance at the Du Bois Robeson People's Center in West Philadelphia. All proceeds will be donated to the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund.

Folks who shared the bill: Ian Macolm, Hannah Sandoz, and Jesse Sheppard. Check em out.
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  1. Live at The Du Bois Robeson People's Center

What Do You See Every Day?

Jordan Perry

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Recorded at home and at the Music Resource Center, Charlottesville, VA

Endless Thanks:
Steve, Alex, Will, Dave, Jor-el, Kim, Heather, Ned, Byron, Ted, Paul, Tristan, Devon, Diane, Lucas, Kass, Tim, Sus, KJ, Katie, Travis
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    Theme 1:43
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    From Traces, What do you? 7:03
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    Five Hours 2:04
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    What Do You See Everyday? 6:58
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    For Three 4:51
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    Days Have Gone, By Volume? 7:18
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    Redact 6:21
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WITNESS TREE

jordan perry

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Recorded and Mastered by Travis Thatcher. March. 2018. "Vinylization of a self-released cassette issued earlier this year by our favorite Virginia-based guitar player. Witness Tree is a brilliant follow-up to Perry’s Read more
Recorded and Mastered by Travis Thatcher. March. 2018.

"Vinylization of a self-released cassette issued earlier this year by our favorite Virginia-based guitar player. Witness Tree is a brilliant follow-up to Perry’s eponymous debut LP (FTR 376), and expands upon the form-abstractions he first displayed there.

Mr. Perry has a firm and solid touch to his string wrangling, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he doesn’t seem to feel compelled to resolve all the melodic questions he raises. Perry often stops in a place he finds interesting, repeating rhythmic figures while trying out variations on the note/chord sequence that stopped him in the first place. It’s a goddamn fascinating approach and allows him to explore textual aspects of the acoustic guitar that are not investigated often enough.

In a certain sense, Perry’s playing feels akin to that of Jon Collins, since both guitarists appear to acknowledge the American Primitive School, while approaching its compositional orthodoxy with an attitude that substitutes experimental tendencies for blues-base thinking. But the way they resolve these themes is quite different. Perry’s slower pacing and precise string selection eschews the aleatory for a kind of mindfulness that is as invigorating as I usually find randomness.

A deep and lovely dig into the outer edges of acoustic guitar rambling."

-Byron Coley, 2019
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    nbdrsnntns 3:50
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    when i was singing 3:36
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    still dance 4:45
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    to clear 3:22
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    full gospel 7:31
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    kemmering 4:13
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    witness tree 3:10
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S/T

jordan perry

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"jordan's songs are not as flowery as what you might think of when you think of classical guitar music; they tend towards a starker, more contemporary style, playing with the spaces between the notes, the diminishing Read more
"jordan's songs are not as flowery as what you might think of when you think of classical guitar music; they tend towards a starker, more contemporary style, playing with the spaces between the notes, the diminishing sustain, the fluid rumble of a repetitive fingerpicking pattern on nylon strings, the interplay of dissonance and harmony in groups of notes, and perfect execution. most of the songs are short sketches that seem to flow seamlessly into one another, with the exception of the roughly seven minute excursions at the front and back of the album. this is an easy album to get lost in, each time i have listened to the LP i am surprised as if woken from a daydream when the side ends, especially at the end of the lengthy and mesmerizing final track, 'whydah flats'. i highly recommend getting a copy of this limited edition LP."
Modern Folk Music of America

Much needed reissue of the extremely limited 2017 debut LP by Virginia guitarist, Jordan Perry. We were turned on to it when Chris Guttmacher at Blue Bag Records in Cambridge told Kassie Richardson of Good Cry (who did the initial 100 pressing) to send us a copy. He thought we might be into it, and halfway into one spin we knew he was right.

There have been several fat boatloads of acoustic guitar players floating across our turntable the past few years. And to be honest, we’ve dug the majority of them. Seems like there must be a lot of good stuff in the water, or something. Despite this, a preponderance of the players we’ve enjoyed have definitely been in the American Primitive mode. Lots of swift modal aktion with a folk/blues base, invaded by various foreign agents. Jordan Perry’s approach to his guitar is quite different.

Although there are some basic völk sonorities in his playing, Mr. Perry’s brunt combines these with more avant garde note selections and compositional gambits, as well as a string attack with classical qualities. While there’s a gentleness to the melodies at which he eventually arrives, Perry’s journey crosses prickly patches of tone clusters, and has a circular logic that defies pop logic. A few passages recall moments on All Is Ablaze, our recent album with experimental player Julia Reidy (FTR 338), while some of the open strumming has a beautifully languid quality verging on mid period William Ackerman.

All of which makes this a record very deserving of much personal headspace. Give Jordan Perry some room and you’ll be very glad you did. We promise. -Byron Coley, 2018
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    FT 6:57
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    Romulea 1:54
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    Crime Times 4:25
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    Andrei 1:53
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    Casting 1:27
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    Boriska 3:01
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    Sunday 2:12
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    Whydah Flats 7:09
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Johanna

Jordan Perry

Counterpoint is mesmerizing. At its most effective, multiple melodies spin their tales simultaneously, forming a singular, shimmering tapestry. As a listener, you may follow the individual threads—clues to the mystery of Read more

Counterpoint is mesmerizing.

At its most effective, multiple melodies spin their tales simultaneously, forming a singular, shimmering tapestry.

As a listener, you may follow the individual threads—clues to the mystery of the whole—each line a string pulling you through a garden labyrinth. Or you may simply let the whole wash over you, immersing yourself in the harmonic pools formed by the interplay of voices.

As a composer, there are choices to be made. Counterpoint is a winding compositional strategy for developing thematic material. It presents many a forked path, many a door which opens to reveal ten more doors. Sure, there are rules and conventions that you can choose to adhere to or ignore. But, for it to truly work its magic, counterpoint needs inspiration, concepts, themes!

Jordan Perry is one such inspired composer who uses the contrapuntal capabilities of the guitar to bring his concepts and themes into full bloom. His latest album, Johanna—a collection of eleven pieces—is both a contemplative and deeply personal memorial to his mother, who passed in the Spring of 2024, and a contemporary Appalachian suite for solo classical guitar.

Throughout the album, Perry draws a robust, decisive tone from his nylon strings; each phrase, thoroughly considered, follows the arc of his breath. There is an overall sense of at-home tranquility in the expansiveness of his harmonic palette. The recording sounds up close and personal, capturing his fractalizing tunes in crystalline clarity. One hears the love, devotion, surrender that went into crafting these songs—the inner dialogue of a composer who purposefully, peacefully, spends his days weaving melodies together in the mountains of Virginia.

The opening “Prelude” feels like entering a dusky room, dimly lit by beams of slowly fading sunlight cutting across the walls and floor through half-open blinds. After a minute of quiet observation, this golden hour darkens when a note from a parallel tonality, a seemingly distant dimension, signals a harmonic shift towards a mournful dissonance. The bass becomes a churning undercurrent, the melody refracts into a darkened spectrum, the room is swallowed in a slowly turning whirlpool of shadows.

“Tandem Over Sound” is a tone poem, an imaginary film score to a flashing childhood memory of an 8-year-old Perry riding a tandem bicycle with his mother, Johanna, over the Assateague Channel outside Chincoteague, Virginia. The melody spins dreamily around a droning G pedal in the inner voice, conjuring spokes and ripples and glimmers in Super 8, while the bass gradually climbs and dips in turns, effort and drift.

Whereas the tandem rides over the Sound, “Death Waltz on the Snake” dives right into it. Composed of cells, reminiscent of the Cuban guitar composer Leo Brouwer, it is a piece of fluid sonic storytelling, each musical gesture responding to the one just before. Perry punctuates this call-and-response with silences that generate new directions in the form. He originally wrote the piece for a compilation recording to benefit activists resisting the construction of an oil pipeline through Appalachia. But, the title also has a double meaning for him: when he was a music teacher in Palestine, Johanna came to visit and this was when he first noticed she had early symptoms of Parkinson’s.

The perfectly titled “A Spring Welcome” is vivid and spry as it blossoms brightly, each motif a seed of exploding color. Partially an homage to Copland’s Appalachian Spring, it also conjures visions of how Johanna, born in Appalachia, would come running out of the front of the house to welcome visitors. Perry’s compositional chops really shine here. One could imagine the piece performed by string quartet or solo piano.

“Godnatsang”, Danish for “Lullaby”, is a stirring ABAB meditation, reminiscent at times of Frantz Casseus’ “Etude”. “Is that you singing?” recalls Heitor Villa-Lobos’ famous “Etude no. 5”, with its creeping, gradually morphing ostinato figure, and haunting long-form melody strategically graphed over and under. “For three” conjures Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” with its regal entrance. In “What Wondrous Love Is This?”, a popular piece of Sacred Harp repertoire, Perry’s interpretation makes the guitar sound almost like a Guzheng, as he unwinds a performance that feels like traditional Chinese Music in contour and structure.

I remember a conversation I had with Perry, maybe a decade or so ago. We were discussing the path of the “classical” guitarist in today’s world. One could spend their time polishing the masterworks of the canon—Tarrega, Bach, Albeniz, etc—pursuing a concert career. Or, alternatively, given that there are several child prodigies and virtuosi who have the canon covered with astonishing prowess, wouldn’t one’s time be better spent developing one’s own compositional voice? In choosing the latter path, Perry locates himself in the lineage of singular latter day composers, such as Leo Brouwer, Frantz Casseus, and Carlo Domeniconi.

Johanna is a tender and compelling work of contemporary solo classical guitar. Jordan Perry’s attention to detail and patient sense of formal development convey an empathy and groundedness that reward repeated listens. On the one hand, it emanates an atmosphere of mystery, colorful stasis in motion, glistening, fluid interpretations of original contrapuntal works. On the other, it generously, politely, offers us the option to actively investigate the interweaving paths he has carved out, knowing that we will undoubtedly make new discoveries with each pass.

-Shane Parish, April 2026 credits released May 1, 2026

Written and Performed by Jordan Perry Recorded and Mixed by Matt Wyatt at Tree and Booms Studio in Charlottesville, Virginia license