Acadia Trad School Staff and Volunteers

Chuck Donnelly

Chuck Donnelly cut his musical chops in the San Francisco Bay Area bluegrass music scene in the early 1990s. In 1996 Chuck moved to Maine with his wife, Janet Anker where they owned the Left Bank Cafe, a nationally known small music venue in Blue Hill Maine. In 2001, Chuck began playing Celtic and Old Time music with Maine fiddler, Katie Wegner. After five years and two CDs with Katie, Chuck started playing with the Clam City Ramblers, an eclectic band with repetoire ranging from Celtic and Old Time to blues and rock and roll. In 2008 Chuck linked up with Maine fiddler, Emma Walsh with whom he toured around New England and cut an album called Fresh Celtic. In 2012 Chuck began working with Ric Pomilia on setting up the Acadia Trad School. Chuck and Ric are partners in this project, which we hope will become an establish institution for higher learning of the traditional music and arts.

Ric Pomilia

Ric grew up playing guitar and keyboards in rock and folk bands on the south side of Chicago. His love of music runs deep into all genres. After moving to Maine in the mid-nineties, he has been the host of “Southern Wind”, Tuesday 8:00-10:00 pm on community radio WERU in Blue Hill, Maine for the last 14 years, where he plays “Everything South of here” from the Latin kings to the boppin’ bayou. He occasionally substitute-hosts on “New Potatoes”- WERU’s Celtic Show Sundays at 4:00 pm. He began playing piano accordion because of his love of trad music- “there were too many guitar players around in the sessions”. His goal in starting Acadia Trad School is to offer musicians training from world-class professional artists and expand interest in Trad music in the community and beyond.
Louise Lopez

Acadia Trad School Instructors

Chris Brinn
Lizza Backes
Baron Collins-Hill

Baron grew up playing the mandolin in Maine and recently graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in music performance and ethnomusicology. Versed in traditional fiddle music, bluegrass, and jazz, he is known for his rhythmic experimentation and unique harmonic sense on both the mandolin and the tenor guitar. Baron plays with fiddler Julia Plumb in their duo Velocipede.
Ray Lambert
Ray grew up in a musical family in a Franco-American community in Lewiston, Maine. His parents and grandparents all spoke French, and that was his first language. His mother used to rock him to sleep to the sound of his grandfather playing the fiddle and tapping his feet. His father played the guitar and harmonica, and he bought Ray his first harmonica when he was six years old. However, it wasn't until he was 50 that Ray seriously began playing Québécois fiddle and accordion tunes on the harmonica. Ray is now known locally as one of the best Québécois style harmonica players in the area. Ray co-authored a seminal book on Québécois music with Bruno Kowalczyk, one of the best practitioners of the art today. Ray's harmonica playing is influenced by many of the best Québécois players, including Bruno, Gabriel Labbe, and Louis-Simon Lemieux.
Pauleena MacDougally

Pauleena MacDougall is the Director and Faculty Associate of The Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine. Pauleena is also an avid Irish dancer and dance Instructor. She will be teaching Irish dance at the Acadia Trad School for the July 2013 Irish music weeek.
Emma Walsh
Chuck Whitney

Chuck Whitney destroyed his first whistle in 1999, 2 days after purchasing it in an effort to "improve" its sound. Undaunted by early failed experiments, he has been making whistles and flutes ever since. His science teaching credentials gave him the courage to experiment on new designs; the years required to produce a good sounding instrument, humility. When he is not in his instrument shop, teaching, or working as a naturalist in Bar Harbor, he is playing in local Celtic sessions and with Celtic band MacLir.
More Instructors to be announced