Greg Boardman of Auburn doesn’t remember when he fell in love with music. He just knows he has loved it since he was a child.

Growing up in Massachusetts, he remembers watching The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Because of that, he tried his hand in a rock band during high school.

When he moved to Maine to attend Colby College, he was introduced to folk music and started listening to Fairpoint Convention.

Their fiddler, Dave Swarbric, opened his eyes to what the instrument could do.

“He was hugely inspirational as a performer and a musician,” Boardman said as he prepared to play his fiddle with Bill Docos for the Ice Cracker Concert in Livermore Falls last week.

Forty years after Boardman picked up his first instrument, he is still playing and passing along his love for stringed instruments as he teaches grades 4 through 8 in Lewiston public schools.

“Music articulates deep human emotions that are hard to express any other way; at least for me,” Boardman said when asked his passion.

And to him, teaching is as much about community-building as it is about meeting new people. 

“It’s great to see them progress,” said Boardman of his students. “To take the music and become their own creator in the music scene.”

When Boardman is not playing with his sons at Guthries, he can generally be found playing at church.

His next endeavor is to start practicing with a string quartet that will back up Suzanne Vega when she comes to Bates College on Jan. 22, and to the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono on the Jan. 24.

Greg Boardman practices in a hallway of the Treat Memorial Library in Livermore Falls with Bill Docos before the two performed in the Ice Cracker Concert series Wednesday, Jan. 6. Boardman began playing music while in high school in Massachusetts, but picked up the fiddle while attending Colby College.