PORTLAND — The fiddle-fueled super group Childsplay will appear in concert this Saturday, Nov. 19 at 8 p.m. at Portland High School Auditorium.

Tickets are $25, and may be ordered by contacting the group’s website at www.Childsplay.org. Portland High School is located at 284 Cumberland Ave.

The acclaimed ensemble boasts more than a dozen fiddlers from throughout the East Coast and beyond, backed up by cello, Celtic harp, flute, guitar, mandolin, banjo, piano, string bass and percussion. Joining the instrumentalists on their current tour are renowned Irish singer Karan Casey and step dancers Kieran Jordan and Kevin Doyle.

The band’s name derives from the fact that all of the fiddles therein were crafted by Bob Childs, a luthier now based in Cambridge, Mass., but with strong ties to Maine. “I cut my teeth playing the fiddle for contra dances in Maine,” he says, fondly recalling boisterous Saturday nights at the old town hall in Bowdoinham back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Here he often shared the stage with his friend Greg Boardman, who later went on to launch the string music program for the Lewiston public school system.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t Childs himself who started the group which bears his name. Back in 1986, he received a call asking if he wanted to go down to Washington, D.C., to perform in a concert at the Smithsonian Institution. He eagerly agreed, at which point he was told — to his surprise — that the organizers of the event had decided to call the band ‘Childsplay’ because everyone on stage was going to be playing an instrument made by him. He and his bandmates had so much fun on that occasion, he said, that they decided that they had to keep going, and “here we are 30 years later, still playing music together.”

When asked to explain the popularity of the ensemble, which receives standing ovations nearly everywhere it goes, Childs points to its unique unity of sound: “It is rare to hear a whole family of instruments made by the same craftsman playing together. Childsplay offers this opportunity. The group’s special sound lies not only in the skill of the individual musicians but in the familial timbre of the instruments they play — a quality similar to the vocal blending of singers from the same family. Childsplay brings together some of the most amazing musicians, all sharing a legacy of playing fiddles that have a common ancestry.”

The group’s fiddle section encompasses a wide cross-section of virtuosic talent, ranging from a veteran violinist with the Boston Symphony to national champions of the Irish and Scottish fiddling traditions to masters of Appalachian-style fiddling. Their concert programs are similarly eclectic, spanning Celtic, Southern, French-Canadian, bluegrass and Scandinavian music nuanced by classical and jazz.

Adding further texture to Saturday’s concert will be vocalist Karan Casey, hailed by the Washington Post as “the Irish equivalent of Emmylou Harris,” and dancers Kieran Jordan and Kevin Doyle, cited by the Irish Echo for the “sheer joy” that they evoke while performing in tandem.

For  Lissa Schneckenberger
playing fiddling in Portland
is a homecoming of sorts
 

Local residents who attend the upcoming Childsplay concert are likely to recognize one of the players as former Litchfield resident Lissa Schneckenburger, one of Greg Boardman’s earliest – and, at that time, youngest – fiddle proteges, now a professional musician living in Vermont. She became acquainted with Bob Childs through Boardman, and when she moved to Boston to attend the New England Conservatory of Music (from which she graduated in 2001), Childs became a great resource, helping to connect her to the thriving traditional music community there.

Schneckenburger’s first involvement with Childsplay was as a volunteer staffing the CD table at their shows in exchange for free concert tickets. Eventually she acquired a Childs-crafted fiddle of her own and was invited to join the group, of which she has been a regular member for the last 10 years.

Bob Childs describes Schneckenburger as “an outstanding musical talent; not only is she grounded in her Maine roots and its music but there is a beautiful charm to her.” He recalls meeting her when she was a young teenager: “My jaw just dropped open when I heard her play. She clearly had a great feeling for the music, beyond her years at the time.”

She has gone on to earn quite a reputation for herself, performing around the U.S., Canada, and Europe and recording nine CDs, six solo and three with colleagues. Dubbed a “world-class fiddler” by Sing Out magazine, she is also a gifted tunesmith, and one of her compositions will be featured in this year’s Childsplay show.

While the ensemble’s tour schedule includes multiple appearances at venues in Massachusetts and New York, it is the Maine performance which Schneckenburger is most looking forward to, since she sees it as a homecoming of sorts  — a chance to reconnect with many of the people who helped encourage and support her early on in her musical journey. To her, it is that indelible sense of community which defines folk music – “music that people want to sing along to, dance to, fall in love to…. music that brings people together.”

— Cindy Larock