Nailah Hunter and June McDoom at Stone Circle Theatre.

All Ages.

--

Nailah Hunter:

The LA-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter has been recording mystical folk and ambient-inspired music since 2019, releasing a series of singles and two EPs: Spells and, most recently, Quietude. Now signed to Fat Possum, Lovegaze is Hunter’s debut full-length, an enthralling album that draws listeners into her enchanting cosmology.As the daughter of a Belizean pastor, Hunter began her musical journey in the church where she played drums, guitar and sang in the choir. She continued on to study music at CalArts, where she studied vocal performance and was given her first harp lesson. Associating the instrument with fantasy, psychedelia, and dream worlds, Hunter became an immediate devotee, locking herself in a room for six hours a day to practice the instrument.To make Lovegaze, Hunter decamped to a small coastal city along the English Channel where she began recording demos with a borrowed celtic harp.  After being introduced to London-based producer Cicely Goulder, Hunter returned to England a year later to further develop the songs. The resulting collection, Lovegaze, is a bewitching testament to the resiliency of the natural world.

June McDoom:

Growing up in South Florida in a Jamaican household, June McDoom was raised around reggae music, which echoed throughout every room of her childhood home. Later, she discovered and nourished her own deep love for folk music and songwriting of the 1960's and 70's. While studying in NYC for a degree in Jazz Performance, her musical palette expanded to include the more intricate influences of jazz and early soul. Realizing that her favorite vintage folk music lacked artists with similar identities as her own, it became increasingly important for McDoom to carve a unique musical space — to push folk music towards a new and different audience.