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About the Editors...
Sue Songer, of Portland Oregon, has enjoyed music as long as she can remember. In grade school, she played piano and eagerly participated in square dancing during P.E. classes. She played folk songs on guitar with informal groups during and just after college. A hiatus came when family and work responsibilities did not seem to leave time for music or dance pursuits. Then in 1986, Sue discovered contra dancing, loved it immediately, and found a way to fit it into her world. In 1989, she took up fiddle and revisited the piano. Since the early '90's, she has been playing both instruments regularly for contra and English dances, although piano is now prevalent. She plays all over the Northwest and occasionally in California and New England with many different musicians. (more information about Sue’s bands). She has been a tutor several times at The American Festival of Fiddle Tunes and has played dance weeks and weekends up and down the West Coast.
In the mid-90s, Sue along with Clyde Curley began
compiling tunes for the first Portland Collection tune book, which
was published in 1997. They, with fiddler George Penk, followed the book
with a companion recording, A Portland Selection. In 2002, Sue and
Clyde had a
sufficient reservoir of new
Portland repertoire to set out on a second tune book. In 2005
they released The
Portland
Collection, Vol. 2
and completed the
companion recording for that book in 2006. These tune books are used widely
throughout the
United States
and Great Britain, and the recordings have also enjoyed a broad popularity.
Sue is firmly grounded in her Portland community. She is founder and director of
the Portland Megaband, an orchestra of 75 dance musicians that plays for a
special contra dance in Portland once a year and every other year at the
Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle. (This band has
released a CD, The Portland Megaband: Live,
recorded at the 2002 dance.) Clyde Curley has been playing folk music on acoustic instruments since high school, but his passion for fiddle tunes was first sparked by exposure to string band music in his San Francisco college days in the 1960’s. After moving to Oregon in 1970 to begin his high school teaching career, he played in a number of bands specializing in a variety of musical styles. It wasn’t until he arrived in Portland in 1986 and began playing mandolin with Jigsaw and fiddle with the Rose City Aces that he began playing for contra dances in earnest. Since then, he has found himself on stages at local dances all over the Pacific Northwest and at festivals and camps beyond, and in addition to his Portland Collection recordings has made a mandolin-centered CD, Clyde Curley and the Oxymorons, as well as a recording with Jigsaw. Clyde retired from teaching in 2001 and moved to Bellingham, Washington. He is devoting his musical energy to exploring the mysteries of old-time and Quebecois fiddle styles respectively with Puget Sound area bands Bottomfeeder and Group du Jour. His longest and closest musical alliance continues to be with his wife Susan, with whom he loves to play Swedish waltzes on fiddle and accordion. |
