Charles Hunt

I am a mandolin and Crane Duet concertina player living in Fairbanks, the Northern most city in Alaska. My new CD, The Cabin Hunter’s Mandolin, is my first CD. It is an eclectic blend of instrumental tunes selected and played by me with help from some of Fairbanks Alaska’s finest acoustic musicians. The CD is a reflection of my ranging interest in varied music genres: folk, rock, new acoustic and his experience playing contra dance music. Originally hailing from Rhode Island, I have been living and playing music in Fairbanks for 26 years. While living in Rhode Island, I took classical mandolin lessons from the renowned fretted instrument teacher Hibbard Perry. Mr. Perry had recently founded the Providence Mandolin orchestra and asked me to join playing second mandolin. My interest in musical arrangement and harmony stemmed from playing in the second mandolin section of the orchestra. I later worked in Germany and played in The Jolly Beggarmen with Irish and Scottish musicians. This band morphed into Puzzle which included a German folk couple. The German couple sometimes sang in Platt Deutsch, or Low German spoken in the lowlands of Northern Europe. In 1982, I transferred to a position in Fairbanks, Alaska. I arrived in Fairbanks with little more than the clothes on his back, a civil service job and my mandolin. I was immediately absorbed into a thriving folk music community. I became a member of the Cabin Hunters, a loose association of musicians interested in Celtic Music. The band was named after an Irish tune, and because the members of the band were desperate to find a place to live in the post pipeline era in Fairbanks. In 1983, I found my cabin which I still live in to this day. The rest of the members followed their dreams outside of Alaska. In the last three years, I have taken up playing the Crane Duet Concertina, hoping to use two parts of my brain to play melody and chords at the same time. The challenge is daunting, but I see the potential of the Duet system to be limitess.