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Crosscurrents: The Daponte String Quartet Explores The Mixed Musics Of Early Maine, Daponte String Quartet

Maine Statehood and Bicentennial Conference

A performance by musical artists Ferdinand "Dino" Liva (violin), Lydia Forbes (violin), Kirsten Monke (viola), and Myles Jordan (cello).

Program notes by Kirsten Monke provide the following background: When we learned about the notated songs of Membertou (c. early 1500s- 1611), a major shaman-chief of the Mi’kmaq nation, the idea for this program began to percolate. What diversity of music might there have been as so many different peoples explored, fished, and colonized Maine’s rocky coast and European influences began to permeate the land? Fragments of elegant china, unearthed at archaeological sites such as Fort Pemaquid, illustrate how some European …