The Portland String Quartet opened its Maine Festival of American Music Thursday night at the Shaker Meeting House in New Gloucester with steel drum music by the Island Beats.

The steel drum has become very popular in Maine, and is certainly a unique product of the Americas, where the instrument was invented (probably in Trinidad as a result of the British injunction against traditional tribal drums).

Another connection with the festival, now in its fifth year, is that Julia Adams, violist of the Portland String Quartet, also plays tenor drum with the Island Beats. She offered a surprising cadenza, or should I call it a riff, in “Jouvay Man.”

Copy the Story Link