[Thursday, June 5th]
Theme: Storytelling, music and folklore
From Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland, Jim Payne is a singer, storyteller, actor, writer, step dancer, and teacher of traditional dance, as well as a multi-instrumentalist who has been a fulltime professional artist for over 40 years.
A leading performer and collector of NL traditional music, Jim is one of the province’s most prolific songwriters, creating musical mosaics of life in this province for theatre, documentaries and videos. He has performed extensively on radio and television in Canada and abroad, played major festivals throughout North America, Europe, Japan and Australia, and represented Canada at international events in several parts of the world.
He has a string of recording credits to his name, including solo recordings, contributions to anthologies of local music, and support and production work on recordings by other NL artists. He owns and operates his own recording label, SingSong Inc., which has several award-winning albums among its over 60 currently available titles that reflect the Newfoundland and Labrador musical experience.
He was a 30-year veteran of Rising Tide Theatre’s annual REVUE,a founding member of the acclaimed traditional music band, A Crowd of Bold Sharemen, and still performs with long-time musical partner,Fergus O’Byrne. He teaches courses in traditional music and song at Memorial University’s School of Music, and, up until the covid era, performed annual Christmas concerts on offshore oil rigs on the Grand Banks.
Jim is also a high latitude adventurer,having sailed through the North West Passage, explored the Canadian and Scandinavian Arctic, including Svalbard, Iceland and Greenland. He has made several trips to the Antarctic Peninsula via the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, covered the entire coast of Labrador by boat and circumnavigated Newfoundland more than 20 times.
An award-winning performer and producer, Jim has been engaged in an ongoing 40-year project with Wren Music of Devon, UK, on the cultural links between Newfoundland and the West Country of England. He is a recipient of Arts NL’s Outstanding Cultural Achievement and Arts in Education Awards, and a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. He has also received a Cultural Tourism Award from the NL Dept. of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, the federal Dept. of Canadian Heritage, and Hospitality NL.
In 2011, he was one of five world musicians, and the only one from North America, invited to Kagoshima, Japan, to participate in a symposium for artists who create music that become part of local traditions. He was inducted into Arts NL’s Hall of Honour in 2016, and presented with the ECMA’s Stompin’ Tom Connors Award in 2017 for contributions to the cultural fabric of Atlantic Canada.
In 2021, he received both the NL Folk Arts Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Music NL’s Industry Builder Award, and in 2024,he was awarded the Premier’s Medal for outstanding contributions to the arts in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Workshop
Advanced Communicators Day
Visit the Advanced Communicators Day page to learn more about Jim’s workshop.