Multi-talented musicians take listeners on a global journey

By Al Beeber on June 17, 2021.

Lethbridge musicians Jodi and Matt Groenheide, known as the jamani duo, have just released their first album. Photo Courtesy Tanya Plonka

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Between them, Lethbridge musicians Matt and Jodi Groenheide play more than 50 instruments and together they’ve released their debut album.
Known as the jamani duo, the Groenheides with heir new instrumental album “Timeline” take listeners on a global musical journey performing various styles on numerous instruments.
Matt, a Lethbridge native and Jodi from Sundre, have played many traditional and non-traditional venues over the years from street corners to festivals.
They both attended the University of Lethbridge and then studied at the University of Southern Mississippi, a school they developed a relationship with thanks to John Wooton, a renowned musician and percussion professor who had been at guest artist at the U of L.
“We had gotten to meet him and take some lessons with him and play some concerts with him and had just kept in touch in the years after and thought that he would be a really great person to study with if we ever went onto to do the Masters. He really tries to keep a fairly international percussion studio,” said Matt recently.
The three kept in touch and both graduated from that American university with Masters in Music.
Matt. who started playing percussion in junior high school, is principal percussionist for the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra and has performed with the U of L Wind Orchestra, the Musaeus String Quartet and has performed in various countries around the world. He’s also taught at the U of L Conservatory of Music and as a private teacher.
Jodi, like Matt, studied at the U of L where she graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Flute and Percussion Performance. She started playing flute at the age of 10 and is principal flute with the LSO while filling in on percussion occasionally. She also teaches privately and has performed in Albania where she spent six months attending a Bible school.
Between the two of them, they play more than 50 instruments including the flute, Japanese Taiko drums, marimba, bongos, drum set, timpani and duck calls. One of the group’s primary focuses is the development of new chamber music for the steel pan.
“The hardest part about it is explaining to people what the album is because it’s so unlike what anyone listens to,” Matt said.
“Jodi and I lay a bunch of different instruments from around the world. Most of them are percussion instruments so things like steel pan, different hand drums from around the world, lots of African percussion, Caribbean percussion, and Jodi also plays flute so it’s an instrumental album but we kind of challenge ourselves to have every track be a different combination of instruments and different kinds of musical styles from around the world. So it’s very random.
“But it all kind of sounds like the two of us,” said Matt.
“For me, I started playing percussion in junior high and percussion is already the one area in a school band where you’re learning multiple instruments at the same time. Where someone else is learning to play the trumpet, or the clarinet, and the percussion section is like “OK, you’re learning to play snare drum, and xylophone and timpani and all those things so being a percussionist in general kind of forces you to be at least a little bit a multi instrumentalist.
“Both Jodi and I did our bachelors degrees at the U of L and most music programs, if you’re studying program, is very classical-oriented – so any kind of percussion instruments you would see in an orchestra. And the U of L does all of that but there is also this huge world percussion program where you get to learn African drumming and dancing and Japanese taiko and Caribbean steel pan.”
The duo do a lot of school drumming workshops for a day or a week and do African drumming or steel pan in addition to their teaching work and gigs.
“It’s like a whole bunch of musical odd jobs we piece together, ” he said.
“For the last quite a few months, just about all music performing has been restricted and that’s just opened up again so we’re starting to do that a little bit again so that’s kind of fun. We’re not doing any big concerts but if you can get a little five-person thing together, that’s what we’ve been doing, little small things like that.”
With the album being released, “we have been doing the little sidewalk concerts again and doing some things around town. We’ve also largely just been trying to promote it online because of the lack of in-person things so the album’s up on all the big online distributors, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, all those things,” he said.

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