What’s New

“Huey explores the changing relationship of two top folk musicians and captures a joyous facet of Maine life. From start to finish the film is a unique, sensitive and satisfying contribution to understanding our time and place.”

(William D. Barry, Maine historian and writer).

“Bonsoir Mes Amis” features cameo appearances by MFC’ers MFC Ellen and John Gawler, Greg, Doug, Smokey, Don and Cindy, plus others from Maine’s Franco community. The film is a wonderful look at how traditional music and dance helps build and maintain community!

Come to the Maine Tent Zoom Room at 6:00 pm EST the filmmaker to put the film in context (and some live music). Watch the film premiere live on YouTube 6:30 – 7:30. Then rejoin the Zoom gathering for questions, dialog, music and rememberances.

https://zoom.us/j/91209198883
password: fiddle

A note from Greg Boardman: We would just like to tell you about the upcoming Maine Country Dance Fiddle Workshop this February 13, 2021. We are still negotiating for a hall in which to invite the first five registrants of each group, advanced, intermediate and beginner, to do the live portion of the workshop (wearing masks and keeping our distance, of course). Simultaneously, the entire workshop will go out on Zoom and thus involve as many folks as care to participate. (more…)

An online traditional music camp for all ages and abilities!!!

“Twice the program at half the price”. We laugh but it’s really not a joke.
Read on!

What is MFC? Why is it different?
I am often asked “why is Maine Fiddle Camp different?” I don’t normally answer that question here on the MFC newsletter because I’m pretty much preaching to the choir, BUT with the advent of “Virtual” MFC this past June, things have changed a bit. With an enlarged audience that doesn’t have to travel to Maine to go to camp, many of you out there reading this might not know much about MFC, so I thought I’d start out with a short description. The following (PRE-COVID) blurb is from a piece I wrote in 2018. Here we go: (more…)

Most Fiddle Campers know who Sylvia Miskoe is. She has been teaching piano accordion at Camp for a couple decades, a petite woman with blonde/grey/white hair walking through Camp with an accordion slung over her back. Sylvia loves traditional Scottish dance music and also New England traditional dance music and old time country dancing. (more…)

Jeremiah, Annemieke, and Luke McLane’s house in Strafford, VT burned to the ground on Tuesday night. Luckily, they were not home and no one was hurt. However, they lost all their possessions—including their treasured instruments. Jeremiah is the second MFC staff member (after Kaity) to lose a house to fire this summer.

Most of you know from FaceBook that long time MFC staff member, Kaity Newell’s, home in Damariscotta burned to the ground last week. Kaity is fine as are her dogs, cats, chickens, car and fiddle. Everything else is pretty much gone. There is a go fund me campaign started to help Kaity recover from this devastating loss, and you can find that here: www.gofundme.com/f/kaity-newell-fire-recovery I can’t say enough about how big a part Kaity has been in the traditional music scene in Maine for the last 40 years or so. Please help as much as you can!

Those of you who registered for V-MFC all received a survey form to fill out. If you haven’t done that yet, please do, so we know what we did right and what we could improve on. We will definitely have more Maestro Bistros throughout the summer and there is talk about a “virtual winter MFC”, but no definite plans at this point. There are still “Camper Concert” Virtual Ensemble videos being processed and you can stay informed by watching the website and all news will be carried on the newsletter right here!! And of course, we are still hoping to get back to REAL “in person” live Maine Fiddle Camp in 2021. We will keep you informed right here!!

Well… we ALL did it!! Virtual Maine Fiddle Camp is over and it was an unqualified success. There were close to 500 registered campers and well over 1000 who “stopped by.” (Many stayed!) I’d like to let you know about the “crew” who put this all together. This was unchartered territory, and starting approximately one month before the virtual camp, we pretty much made it up as we went. Some of the MFC staff had familiarity with Zoom meetings and other interactive online platforms. Others had knowledge of YouTube, and others yet were familiar with website design, etc. None had EVER done anything approaching the scope of Virtual Maine Fiddle Camp 2020, but we wanted to give it a try. Read on if you want to know who made this happen… (more…)