Above: String instrumentalists Susie Burke and David Surette.
The March Mandolin Festival celebrates an instrument found throughout the world
By Charlie Weinmann
For David Surette, the mandolin is a constant. Wherever music is being played and whatever genre musicians are playing, you’ll hear a mandolin. It encompasses all styles and all emotions – the strumming and the plucking of a mandolin remind listeners of a past heartache or stir up joyful dancing.
“I think there’s something about the sound of the instrument itself that lends itself to a kind of feel … earthy, emotional, ‘rootsy’ types of music,” said Surette, head curator of the March Mandolin Festival, which returns to the Seacoast for its 13th year with a special concert at The Stone Curch in Newmarket on March 6. The festival continues with classes at the Concord Community Music School through March 8.
Surette and his long-time partner Susie Burke have been playing the mandolin and other classic string instruments around the Seacoast since they were students at the University of New Hampshire in the 1980s. Since then, they’ve become fixtures in the Seacoast music scene and champions of the mandolin.
“When David started this (festival), the joke was it was to ‘elevate the mandolin,’ this was going to be the year of the mandolin,” Burke said. But now it’s become “the decade of the mandolin.”
The festival’s roots are as humble as the instrument itself. According to Surette, it began as a way to keep the community of musicians growing, a chance for new and experienced musicians alike to become acquainted with the instrument.
“It started as just one little Saturday afternoon, a couple of workshops with myself and one other mandolin player and teacher, and a Saturday night concert over at the Concord Community Music School,” he said. “We thought if we could get 10 or 20 students for starters, we would be happy.”
Now, about 50 students turn out for the festival each year. Surette and three guest instructors guide the musicians, discussing different playing styles and techniques with students of all skill levels.
“We try and run a pretty broad range of mandolin music, because the mandolin is found in a lot of different genres.” — David Surette
The Friday-night concert at The Stone Church helps further build connections between new and experienced mandolin players and local audiences.
“At this point, it’s a three-day festival,” Surette said. “Having the concert in the Seacoast really helps involve the local community. We get more listeners and just more people experiencing it.”
Players come from all over North America to attend the festival, with many hailing from New England, Michigan, and Canada’s Maritime provinces.
“The players tend to be very passionate and very interested in this kind of event,” he said. “They really enjoy getting together with 50 other mandolin fanatics for the weekend, exchanging news of their instruments, trying each other’s instruments, playing together, jamming.”
For each festival, Surette provides a variety of mandolin styles for attendees to learn. This year’s festival will feature Celtic, bluegrass, jazz and swing, blues, classical, and Eastern European music. The festival also includes sessions for beginners who’ve never picked up a mandolin before.
“We try and run a pretty broad range of mandolin music, because the mandolin is found in a lot of different genres,” Surette said.
Burke added, “It’s really a lovely community of people. They just really enjoy each other, and they are familiar with the venue and the whole setup.”
This year’s guest artist is Don Stiernberg, a Chicago jazz musician and protégé of Jethro Burns, a well-known jazz mandolin player in the ’70s. Burns started as a comedian in the ’50s, with his nationally recognized comedy act, “Homer and Jethro.”
Don Stiernberg is a guest artist at this year's March Mandolin Festival.
“Behind the comic facade, (Burns) was a killer player,” Surette said. “He knew all the old-fashioned jazz standards and swing, and Don has really learned all that stuff.”
Skip Gorman, who lives in Grafton, will also be teaching at the festival. He is a Monroe-style bluegrass specialist and a scholar of American cowboy music. The fourth instructor, Glen Loper, hails from Portland, Maine, and is well-versed in contra dance music, old-time fiddle tunes and Irish and French-Canadian music.
The mandolin is diverse and distinctive, according to Burke, but it’s often overlooked. The festival is a way to demystify an instrument that “has such character, and (is) used in so many styles of music,” she said, adding that there’s a lot worth celebrating. “The community of (the mandolin), the sharing of it, the expression … and, in this case, hopefully inspiring people to take up an instrument.”
The March Mandolin Festival takes place March 6-8 at Concord Community Music School in Concord. For tickets, visit ccmusicschool.org. A Seacoast concert will be held Friday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at the Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket. Tickets are at stonechurchrocks.com.