Music in Maine

Music makers in Maine make instruments, create music in their communities, and honor heritage.

Soren Bruns, Musician

Born in Rapsted Field, Denmark, Soren Hansen Bruns (1863-1910) left Denmark to avoid conscription into the army. He was nineteen years old when he arrived in Portland in 1883.

Soren Bruns’ passion was music. He played clarinet with the American Cadet Band, and violin with the American Cadet Band Orchestra.

Bruns worked as a cabinet maker with the W. A. Allen Company making stairs, columns, and other architectural elements. Bruns and his Swedish wife, Sophie Oleson, lived in the Oakdale Section of Portland and raised seven children. Bruns’ collection of instruments and songbooks,

Elise Fellows White, violin prodigy

Mary Elise Fellows White (1873-1953) noted in her autobiography that her family was musical, saying that her father, “played the violin, and though self-taught, he had a sense of tempo and rhythm that made my toes tingle to dance."

At age ten, she attended the New England Conservatory in Boston to study the violin. At seventeen, patrons funded her trip to study with Jacob Grün in Vienna. Without a formal musical debut—a professional career requirement in Europe—at age 19, she returned to Maine.

During 1895, Elise Fellows joined a musical trio that traveled across the United States and Canada where she met Canadian mine operator Bruce White, who became her husband in 1898. Elise moved to Nelson, British Columbia, where she lived for ten years before returning to Skowhegan, Maine with her two young sons. Bruce White died of influenza in Canada during the 1918 pandemic.

Elise Fellows White spent her elder years between Maine and New York making a meager living writing poetry and articles on topics from music theory to the history of Skowhegan. In 1937 and 1942, Schirmer Records in New York recorded White performing songs from her youth. She wrote in her diary, "Oh! My records! These new recordings make me happy. Schirmer’s machine is a joy, such tone-quality and such clarity!"

Mellie Dunham: Fiddle Master, Snowshoe Maker

Alanson Mellen “Mellie” Dunham (1853-1953) was “Maine’s champion fiddler,” so talented that in 1925, automobile tycoon Henry Ford sent a pullman train car to Norway, Maine to bring Dunham and his wife, Emma Richardson, to Dearborn, Michigan to play at Ford’s home.

At the age of thirteen, Dunham bought a fiddle in pieces, repaired it, and started playing. About 1873, he started making snowshoes, and co-founded the Norway Snowshoe Company in 1909. He made snowshoes for Robert E. Peary’s Arctic explorations, with Peary noting the snowshoes never failed him.

After Dunham’s success in Michigan, he and his wife Emma performed on vaudeville stages including in New York, Boston, Washington DC and Philadelphia.

After Dunham’s rise to popularity in 1925, he published fiddling music including Rippling Waves Waltz. The Victor Recording Studio in Brooklyn, New York pressed a 78 recording of Dunham playing the song.

Emma played piano, their daughter Pearl the pump organ, and Pearl’s husband Nathan Noble, accompanied Dunham on bass fiddle. The quartet played local dances as “Mellie Dunham's dance band.”

Maine Charitable Mechanics

Founded in Portland in 1815, The Charitable Mechanic Association supported middle class artisans and skilled laborers, known as mechanics, with a lending library, apprenticeship programs, monetary loans, and public exhibits of members’ work.

The Mechanics organized a parade in 1841 in Portland, where each division or guild marched behind a custom banner. One banner promoted the Cabinet Makers, Chair Makers, Organ Builders, Piano Forte Makers, Turners, and Plane Makers. One side reads, "Our Cabinet, although composed of different materials is too strongly Cemented to be easily Separated." The reverse highlights instrument makers with, "Our Chords of earthly Harmony lead to the regions of the Golden Harp."