Denny Breau Submitted photo
Guitar-playing, singing and songwriting legend Denny Breau will perform at The Oasis of Music beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, at The Church at Trinity Commons in Lewiston.
Breau’s parents, Hal Lone Pine and Betty Cody, were popular country performers and RCA recording artists beginning in the 1940s. His older brother, the late Lenny Breau, is considered a jazz guitar giant. A recent Dirty Linen review of Denny’s solo CD of “neighborly song portraits of weathered souls” said that “listening to Denny nimbly bend his acoustic steel strings…one can hear a jazz player’s elegant fluidity.”
Breau started playing guitar when he was 9 years old and was performing professionally by his early teens. During more than 30 years as a full-time musician, he has performed with many well-known artists and picked alongside outstanding guitarists including Bryan Sutton, Harvey Reid, J.P. Cormier, Pat Donohue, Dan Crary and Steve Kaufman. He has long been in demand as a studio musician and has done jingles and sound tracks for radio and television as well as recorded and produced albums for other artists. He was a member of roots music trio Turkey Hollow with Tom Rowe and Tom’s son Dave starting in 1998. Since Rowe’s death in early 2004, Denny and Dave have continued to perform as Turkey Hollow on a limited basis. Breau was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004, the youngest inductee in the history of the organization.
Breau is a triple threat: a consummate picker, evocative songwriter, and a singer with a “voice that is warm and inviting but completely unpretentious— much like the singer himself,” according to Lucky Clark. Mainers have long considered Denny a “must see,” but they are happy to share a favorite son with those “from away.”
The Oasis of Music is a weekly music series of performances of roughly thirty minutes, running from September to May. Admission is free, with donations accepted. The musical genres vary greatly, in largely, but not exclusively, acoustic formats. COVID restrictions of optional mask-wearing and social distancing are observed. The Church at Trinity Commons is located at 247 Bates St., Lewiston.
For more information, call 207-344-3106.
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