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I have been teaching and performing, for the most part in
Maine, for
close to forty years. I am currently teaching strings full time
in the
Lewiston Public Schools, grades 4-8, and at Bates College, where
I lead a
fiddle group and teach privately. Apart from that, my performing
life
brings me from the American Folk Festival in Bangor,
playing with my boys,
to the viola section of the Maine Chamber Ensemble, playing classical
masterworks in Lewiston, to local nursing homes, performing with
my
students. It is also my joy to play for Christian worship, which
I do
these days mainly with the teams at the Mechanic Falls Vineyard Christian
Fellowship and for our third-Sunday Taize service at Lewiston's
Trinity
Episcopal Church.
My interest in gathering with large groups of fiddlers has led
to the
formation of the Mighty Cloud of Fiddlers,
a rag-tag revolving-door blend
of professional and amateur volunteers who meet biennially since
1988 to
raise money for Habitat for Humanity. This interest has also
led to the
creation of the Maine Country Dance Fiddle Workshop, which I
co-founded
with Kaity Newell and Ellen Gawler in 1992, and Maine
Fiddle Camp, started
with my wife Martha in '94. Now in the capable managerial hands
of Doug
Protsik, Maine Fiddle Camp continues to expand and improve, ever
true to
the initial impetus.
My formal higher education began at Colby College, where composer
and
conductor Peter Re influenced me greatly, and continued at the
University
of Southern Maine, where I graduated with a BM in Viola Performance.
My
studies there with Julia Adams and all her colleagues in the
Portland
String Quartet inestimably inform my love of chamber music and
teaching.
I recently received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard
College,
where I was able to draw together many interests in traditional
and
contemporary art, especially as they interface with things of
the Spirit.
As a fiddler, I began primarily under the dual influence of Dave
Swarbrick, whose performance with Fairport Convention in
1970 hit me like
a ton of psychedelic bricks, and Dave Siegel, a classmate at
Colby who
introduced me to blues, country, old timey and bluegrass music.
Of the
many older fiddlers in Maine who lavished their time, company
and
expertise on me I have to mention foremost Otto Soper and Simon
St. Pierre
as seminal inspirations. Others I must mention include Cherry
Frechette,
Ben Guillemette, Lucien Matthieu, Leo Murphy, Albany Beaulieu,
J. Walter
Snipe, and way over in New Hampshire, Dudley
Laufman. Of my
contemporaries and students who impact me beyond consciousness,
too many
names to include here come to mind.
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