Maine Folklife Center Announces Oct. 23 International Folk Concert
Contact: Pauleena MacDougall, 581-1848; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The Maine Folklife Center is presenting a free public concert Tuesday, Oct. 23, from 1:30-3 p.m. in Minsky Recital Hall, Class of 1944 Hall, at the University of Maine.
The concert features Maine’s Old Grey Goose International, a multi-cultural folk ensemble that plays old-time dance tunes on a variety of acoustic instruments. Members of the group include Doug Protsik, Jeff McKeen, John Gawler and Eric Rolfson, who also is associate vice president of development at UMaine.
Old Grey Goose musicians have traveled around the world sharing American folk music and dance with traditional musicians in Central Asia, Africa, Cuba, Europe and elsewhere.
The group sings songs of love, work, diversity and achievement from a vast repertoire of American folk history, according to its website (http://www.oldgreygoose.org/). The band is also presents educational workshops and composes and arranges collaborative musical scores designed uniquely for each of the many host countries it visits.
Members recently performed at a festival in Tajikistan with folk musicians from that country and from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, India and Germany.
“They’re going to present sort of a collage of traditional music from around the world,” says Pauleena MacDougall, associate director of the Folklife Center. Their international music exchange, she adds, is “another way to bring the American culture to folks. I think people are really going to enjoy it. It’s free, so everyone can go.”
The band plans to sing songs, tell stories and show video clips from several of the countries it has visited.
The concert is timed with the university’s International Week celebration, says MacDougall.