About Glen
I’m a dance musician and a music teacher. It’s the best job I’ve had by far. I play a few instruments–fiddle, guitar, tenor banjo, and hand drum–but for the most part I play mandolin.
My first instrument was trumpet. (Maybe someday I’ll get back to it.) In high school, when most of my friends were hunched over electric guitars, a friend who played the mandolin was making music that caught my ear. I bought a plywood mandolin, took some lessons, and wrote some ridiculous songs to amuse my classmates.
In college I found a local bluegrass jam that motivated me to learn a few fiddle tunes from books. My focus on fiddle music really took off when a friend introduced me to contradancing. I started to notice how the tunes and the dancing could fit together. The pulse in the music on the stage was the same pulse in the movement on the floor. You could feel it and physically react to it–whether you’re the musician or the dancer.
After dancing for a few years, I now play for them as well, and I get to work with a lot of really great musicians from all over the place. I get to share what I’ve learned with my students at lessons in Portland ME, and at other places like Maine Fiddle Camp in Montville, ME where I’ve taught sine 2005, and recently at David Surette’s March Mandolin Festival in Concord, NH.