Lorinda Jones

Lorinda Jones grew up in the small town of Tompkinsville, Kentucky alongside the knobs of the Cumberland plateau. She was fortunate to be surrounded by old-time, gospel, shape-note and bluegrass music, and even classical music, in which she earned her Bachelor of Music Education on classical piano and oboe. But it was when she met the “friendly cardboard dulcimer” as a public-school music educator and began teaching and sharing the traditional music that she felt she had “come back home” to her roots. Lorinda has taught the dulcimer in schools, at festivals across the country and one of the few music therapists (board-certified) to have developed approaches to using the dulcimer in a therapeutic setting.

Lorinda has been given the title of “Pioneer of Music Therapy in Kentucky” as she was one of the first certified music therapists to develop programs for children with disabilities in the school setting. She has also been a pioneer for the mountain dulcimer and folk harp in Kentucky, having formed the Heartland Dulcimer Club, chaired the annual HDC Festival for twenty-five years and now as director of the Heartland Harp Ensemble.

Her current passion of sharing the ancient music of Ireland can be heard in the recordings and performances of an Skylark, an all-female Irish trio specializing in the traditional music of Ireland performed on traditional instruments including dulcimer, harp, fiddle, pipes, voice, concertina, flutes and whistles.

Continuing her love for traditional music, Lorinda was recently awarded an apprenticeship grant from the Kentucky Arts Council, learning fiddle tunes from John Jacob Niles scholar, Ron Pen. Together they are presenting how fiddle tunes important to Kentucky can be shared in the dulcimer community.

Website

https://lorindajones.com/