Playing By Heart
These fiddlers focus on traditional music

Steve Muise, orchestra teacher at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, is the dynamic leader of the Franklin County Fiddlers, a musical ensemble now in its 22nd year.
By Bruce D. Snider | Photographs by Robert Bukaty “Hup!” The shout punched through the gorgeous din of a big, rollicking string band. A stage full of musicians on fiddles, cellos, guitars, and other acoustic instruments was powering through “4:44,” a sweet, driving tune by the Acadian band Vishtèn. When the big man with the little fiddle and huge smile issued that verbal exclamation point, the players kicked up the intensity yet another notch, blazing along in a burst of exquisitely controlled power. Then, with another shouted signal, the whole glorious freight train slammed to a halt. The players looked up from their instruments, glowing. The audience burst into applause. The smiling man, now beaming even more broadly, was Steve Muise (pronounced “Muse”), orchestra teacher at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, Maine. The players, improbable as it seems after that performance, were his students. But this was no orchestra. It was the Franklin County Fiddlers, an ensemble Muise founded at the high school to spread the joy of playing the traditional music of New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and beyond. Now in its 22nd year, the program has accomplished that and more, broadening the skills of classical players, awakening Maine students to their cultural heritage, and building a musical community with connections that reach far beyond the state’s borders.

Fiddlers (left to right) Emily McCarthy, Casey Rogers, Riley Laflin, and Jennie Chen deliver a lively concert performance.
With a common repertoire of tunes that can be endlessly elaborated, fiddle music thrives virtually everywhere, and among players of every ability.
Ragtime Annie—and let me follow. The magic thing was that I was just playing.” Degrees in performance and music education from Berklee College of Music in Boston followed. “But I might not be playing today, much less teaching, if it weren’t for fiddle music,” he said. “It was the spark.”
Silas Rogers caught that same spark at the age of seven or eight, when he attended his first Fiddlers concert. “They would do stuff like play behind their backs,” remembered Rogers, now 18, “and they played really cool arrangements.” As soon as he was eligible, he joined Muise’s middle school Fiddlers group, which serves as something of a farm team for the audition-only high school program. A powerhouse fiddler who doubles on guitar and tenor banjo, Rogers will study boatbuilding at The Apprenticeshop in Rockland after graduation. But he’ll also play professional gigs with his brother, Nolan, who at 15 is also a veteran Fiddler and a gifted cellist.
Rogers and his senior classmates got a taste of the traveling musician’s life during their freshman year, on a six-day bus tour of the Canadian Maritimes where they had a private workshop with Vishtèn, performed at schools, and jammed with local musicians. “Musically, we all grew a lot,” says flutist Sophia Bunnell, who felt an unexpected sense of kinship with her Acadian counterparts. Muise has led similar trips to Boston, New Orleans, Quebec, and Ireland—all places with links to Maine’s French-Canadian and Scots-Irish musical heritage. The tours always include a college visit and bonding time on the bus. But at home or abroad, Rogers said, the group relishes its moments onstage the most.

Silas Rogers on banjo and Sophia Bunnell on flute add musical layers to the jigs and reels.

Fiddlers Miriam Cohen, Grace Andrews, Brendan Hickey, and Anna Glass (left to right, first two rows) are well versed in improvisation and playing by ear.