Auburn fiddler Greg Boardman to play CD-release concert
Greg Boardman, a fiddler and music teacher known for decades as a pillar of Maine’s folk music community, celebrates the release of his new CD with a concert at 8 p.m. Friday, April 30, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Bates College, 75 Russell St.
The event is open to the public. A donation at the door is requested. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.
An Auburn resident, Boardman has performed in folk venues all over Maine during his 30-year career. His new recording, Divine Waltz, is a collection of tunes he has written over the past several years, performed more or less in a traditional Down East style — “acoustically delivered with a chamber-rock edge,” says Boardman.
Joining him at Bates will be several musicians featured on the disc, including Chris Prickitt, banjo; Beth Borgerhoff, accordion and piano; Peter Sturtevant, guitar; Jeff Taylor, bass; and Mike Hansen, percussion. Boardman’s sons Isaac, Ethan and Aidan will also perform, as will fiddler Ellen Gawler. From Bates, where Boardman is a member of the applied music faculty, participating musicians include seniors Jessie Gagne-Hall, fiddle; Mike Roberts, bass and dobro; and the folk choir Northfield.
Boardman has performed with the Northern Valley Boys, Old Grey Goose, the Ben Guillemette Ensemble and Timbrel. He practices a fiddle style inspired by such musicians as Don Messer, Simon St. Pierre, Otto Soper and Fairport Convention’s Dave Swarbrick, the English folk-rocker who first moved Boardman to swap his electric guitar for a fiddle.
Boardman’s solo recordings include Century Reel, In Came a Fiddler and Chantons, a Franco-American song collaboration with Michael Parent.
As a promoter of traditional fiddle music Boardman founded or co-founded a number of popular fiddling events, including (with the late Shirley Littlefield), Maine’s longest-running fiddle contest, the East Benton Fiddlers’ Convention.
He has also long been involved in the state’s burgeoning country-dance scene. Boardman teaches strings for the Lewiston School Department as well as for Bates.
